Carnivhell
by Meresger
Summary: Death is a farce. Entirely based upon a character death, namely that of Emma Swan. Rated for language and mentions of rape and incest. Horror, humor, parody, maybe some spiritual and eventual romance, who knows. Characters from other works of fiction may make cameos, but this is not a crossover. (Swanfire?)
1. Death Becomes Her

Title: Carnivhell

Disclaimer: I don't own _Once Upon A Time_. If I did, Adam  & Eddy would be fired and picking up litter by the side of the highway.

Summary: Death is a farce. Entirely based upon a character death, namely that of Emma Swan. Rated for language and mentions of rape and incest. (Swanfire?)

Genre: Horror, humor, parody, maybe some spiritual and eventual romance, who knows. Characters from other works of fiction may make cameos, but this is not a crossover.

Author's Note #1: This was originally going to be a take-off on _The Five People You Meet in Heaven_ , but Heaven is boring and Emma sure isn't worthy of the Pearly Gates. Instead, this is an Emma-bashing/torture-fic, because I am just so out of love with the villain fangirl she's become.

Author's Note #2: I don't actually have in mind any particular torturous trails for Emma to endure (yet). I'm hoping readers will respond with some witty suggestions. Or, if you like, write your own chapter!

Author's Note #3: Death is played by Niecy Nash.

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 **Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **CHAPTER ONE**

 **DEATH BECOMES HER**

There were screams, a flash of brilliant magical light, and people calling her name in the midst of momentary agony as though every bone in her body had been crushed to dust -

That gave way to the scent of wet asphalt and the feeling of her face pressed up against ground embracing her, cold and unyielding.

Slowly, Emma Swan pushed herself up from the damp blacktop where she had come to rest. The place was dark and the stars in a night sky above half hidden by clouds. Her first thought was a portal, which would explain both the sudden change in surroundings and what seemed a loss of a time of a good half day... as well as, perhaps, her wardrobe.

She had a vague sensation of being hit by a shit-storm of magic, and though Emma couldn't recall any sort of magical travel that altered her clothing to leather and _flannel,_ she had become uncomfortably accustomed to being thrust into ridiculous situations with sudden changes in venue and clothing. The absurd had come to define her life, and against her initial better judgment, she'd ultimately embraced the crazy that was her dysfunctional mess of a family and their heritage.

It wasn't the life she would have chosen for herself or her son, but it had kept choosing them no matter how hard she'd fought until she'd just thrown her hands up and joined in the calamity that was defined by magical mayhem, ad nauseam epic adventures, and a morally ambiguous mashup of heroes and villains that she had come to realize, over time, had changed her in ways that her pre-Storybrooke self wouldn't have approved.

To her silent shame, she'd traded her sense of justice for the comfort of family and not growing old alone, which Emma supposed was a choice that many people made, and perhaps came to regret too late to become the person they'd once hoped to be and have their children be proud of.

Perhaps, she sometimes considered, that change was inevitable and the heroic person Henry believed her to be was just as much a figment of his imagination as her parents being virtuous leaders was pure fabrication.

Henry...

Something about her son tugged at her memory, but the thought shattered as her boot crunched something in the darkness.

Bending down, Emma discovered a pair of glasses. _Her glasses_. The ones she hadn't worn since living in Tallahassee.

It took a moment to make the connection. The glasses, her clothes, the surroundings that seemed distantly familiar - her reflection in a puddle as the clouds parted to let the moonlight illuminate the Portland amusement park and the teenager staring back at her.

Emma leapt back to her feet. What kind of trickery was this?

She moved quickly through the park, her feet taking her toward the looming shadow of the Italian Trapeze - the spot of her first date with Neal.

It had been a long time since she'd thought about this place and him - and at the same time Neal was never far from her thoughts, though just as that first decade she had become skilled at never making those moments known.

Emma had applied herself to living and loving in the present. But that didn't mean she was always successful, that she didn't look at her son's smile and feel a momentary heartbreak that Neal wasn't there to see it. Or that she never took out her cigar box of pre-Storybrooke momentos and stared at that Polaroid when she felt like she was forgetting what he looked like.

And though she'd stopped wearing the keychain, put it away for safekeeping after so many crazy world-hopping, wardrobe-changing adventures, she did take it out now and then when the world felt like too much, when the life and the person she used to be seemed so far away, like a dream, and she worried that she would lose that sense of herself to the "fairy tale" she'd landed herself in.

There had been a demarcation line in her life, the person she was when she didn't know her family and the person she became after breaking the Curse - and they were frustratingly irreconcilable, forcing her again and again to choose Savior over Bailbonds person, Swan Princess (or Dark Swan) over Emma Swan - bestower of charity and unjudging "heroism" over fighting for the forgotten and demanding justice.

It was hard to fight for justice when her family seemed forever the perpetrators who'd wronged others and her son so desperately wanted everyone to have a second chance, to have their slates whipped clean as they started over in the post-Curse world. Maybe that made Henry a better person than she was, or maybe he was just even more brainwashed by growing up the son of the Evil Queen than she was as a result of her indoctrination by magical fire into the fold of "everyone deserves a happy ending, no matter how despicable they are... unless they're someone truly good standing in the way of the bad guys getting their happy ending, in which case, fuck 'em."

The closer she got to the swings, the more Emma's heart hammered, unsure of what she would find, and what she _wanted_ to find.

If anyone had deserved a second chance and a happy ending, it had been Neal, but fate was cruel to him, like it was to Graham, Johanna, Marian and all those truly good people who had loved and were lost out to the benefit of others less deserving.

Good always wins was a lie that parents told their children, and even in fairy tales it wasn't true. More often than not, evil was triumphant while masquerading as good.

And she'd been party to that.

She'd essentially wished Neal dead after the Cannery, a wish she'd come to regret when he'd died in her arms, a wish that had twisted itself into a painful and festering guilt with compounding betrayals she'd peiced together into some counterfeit version of Tallahassee. All of it was well hidden beneath the layers of a savior's armor, the frills of a princess' ball gown.

But she had none of that here, strangely young again and dressed as she had been that night, the only thing missing her cup of coffee and her companion thief.

At last, Emma rounded a concessions stand and there, on the platform, was an out-of-place shadow moving beneath the Italian Trapeze. Another sliver of moonlight revealed the figure and her heart lurched.

"Neal..."

She'd dreamed of him over the years, but none felt quite so real as this. And though she'd hastened to this spot, hoping - she was suddenly paralyzed with fear and the thought came to run away. Because this had to be a trick. She was not seventeen and he was not in Portland. And if it was real... would he be happy to see her? Did he approve of how she'd lived her life? She wasn't so sure that he would be, had shied away from any notion of using Zelena to contact him. And even if he was... what did this mean, the both of them here, like this?

No, it had to be a dream or a trick.

He looked up, gaze scanning the darkened surroundings and Emma pushed down that fear, determined to face whatever this was, to not be fooled or toyed with. Instead of slipping back into the shadows, Emma took a step forward, raising her voice, "Neal!?"

She expected his immediate response, but instead he just kept looking blandly about, then dropped his gaze back to his lap and the glove he was toying with.

"Neal?" she repeated, taking another step.

"Honey child," a brassy alto boomed from behind, "he can't hear you."

Emma spun, nearly tripping over her chunky boots, to face a tall, curvy, ebony-skinned woman. Dressed in a boobsy black cloak with hot pink press-on nails that matched extensions in her long, dark hair, the woman was regarding her from a spot leaned casually against a lamp post.

"Who the hell are you?" Emma demanded, clenching her hands, ready to unleash white-hot magic if necessary.

"Hell's got nothing to do with it. Not yet, anyway," said the woman. "And what are you planning to do? Blast me with your special Savior powers? Honey child, you're no one's messiah now. And in this place only I've got magic skills!"

That said, she snapped her pink-nailed fingers and the park's lights came on... which didn't seem to phase the brooding man on the swing. Neal didn't even seem to notice.

Emma tried to conjure a ball of light, but found the woman's words held true. She could feel magic, but she was disconnected from it.

"Where are we? What do you want?" Emma asked. "And is that-"

"Really your original baby daddy?" the woman prompted. "That's him. Like I said, he can't hear you. Or see you. Where we are is a construct of your mind, a place of significance that you both share, a place that could be made real and everything altered if you pass the trails ahead, but right now, the twain are not overlapping. What I want? That's irrelevant. I'm just doing my job."

At Emma's still bewildered and annoyed look, the woman rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Honey child, I'm the Grim Reaper and _you dead_."

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Next up: Emma takes a hard look in some mirrors.


	2. Self-Reflection For Assholes

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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CHAPTER TWO

SELF-REFLECTION FOR ASSHOLES

"I was expecting clouds and harps and angels," Emma said after digesting the words of _Death_.

"Well, at least you didn't say you were expecting an old, pale, white dude," scoffed the Grim Reaper while leading her through the darkened amusement park. "Although, I'd have though with the life you've lived, you'd be expecting fire and brimstone and getting jabbed in the ass by hot pokers."

At Emma's perturbed expression, Death amended, "I kid. People inclined toward taking the down escalator rarely ever preemptively consider that's where they're headed. Villains always see themselves as the innocent victims of other people's evil deeds, when usually, however manipulated by other jerks they might have been, they're still just assholes."

"Hold on," Emma sputtered. "Are you saying _I'm_ a villain?"

"Shockingly asks the woman who was the Dark One," scoffed Death. "I'm saying, like Nieztsche, you looked into that dark abyss for too damn long, honey child. You chased monsters until you went from hunting 'em to fucking 'em and calling 'em heroes. If that shit don't stink...," concluded the Angel with a bad smell wave of her hand.

Emma huffed a little, offended. "I know I made some mistakes, but-"

"Ah _but but but_ ," Death cut her off, making a squawking gesture with her long-nailed hand. "Save your sorry justifications for someone with less omniscience who isn't gonna judge you on the purity of your soul, which is looking pretty dingy about now.

"Hence, Baelfire can't see you," Death explained. "You're not worthy _to see him_ , or any of the other good people who've passed on before you."

"But _... I'm sorry_. I know that I... that I killed people-"

"Killed people, shmilled people," sighed Death. "Yeah, you did, but your real sins, Emma Swan, aren't the taking of life. It's that instead of repenting, you let yourself be swayed by your sad sack of 'reformed' bad guys into casting off all responsibility and blame on the demonic presence you chose to take into your soul... or the tattered remnants of it, anyway, considering the consequences of your little time travel holiday, which we'll get to later on your list of demerits."

"Demerits?" Emma asked.

"Shit you did that's keeping you in the 'Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collected Two Hundred Dollars' camp," said Death, and a scroll appeared in her hand while from her billowing sleeve she pulled out a fluffy pink quill with which she made a slashing mark upon the paper.

" _Like_ the whole becoming the Dark One."

"But.. I was trying to save the town. To save-"

"Regina?"

"Well, yes, it was going to kill her and she'd-"

"Worked _so_ hard for that happy ending after the mass murdering and attempted murdering and gas-lighting by giving you some fake mommyhood memories that turned you into a blonde version of her - a selfish tart whose definition of good parenting was guilting her kid into coming along to support a morally corrupt romantic affair with a honorless creep? Yeah, she did _so_ much good for you and your son that earned her soul-sacrificing points," Death scoffed. "That woman deserves hot pokers up the hoo-ha for the shit she's done, not a congratulatory pat on the ass for downgrading from mass murder and familial homicide to adultery. Between the two of you, quite frankly, with your shitty codependent enabling of terrible motherhood and misogynist fuckery, y'all undid all of Xena's hard work to bring feminism to the fairy tale realms in like a _year_. A _year_.

"Powerful females my perfectly proportioned ass. You sold out every drop of self-respect and moral fortitude you had left to cater to the whims of an infatuated alcoholic with even less remorse and empathy than you step granny. And for the demerits that heart-crushing hoe had, she at least had self-respect and fighting against a patriarchal society bent on the oppression of women going for her - until her hot mess of a romance with that forest hobo that you sacrificed your sanity to protect - never mind your baby daddy's apartment, and who gave _you_ the authority to do _that_? Letting his _murderer_ sleep in his bed. Yeah, that's another demerit right there!"

She made another slashing stroke.

"I didn't know Marian was Zelena," Emma sputtered

"No, you just thought you'd alter the past by saving a stranger rather than trying to save your son's father. Hypocrisy. _Another_ demerit!" Death exclaimed, writing again.

"And," the pink-highlighed Grim Reaper continued, "speaking of that, don't you even try to defend your little Dark One stint as some kind of unavoidable martyrdom, honey child. You made that choice because you'd spent the previous nine weeks too preoccupied playing pirate booty to notice your son was crying himself to sleep over his very recently dead dad and was only going along with his psycho adoptive mom's book plan because he hoped to write his dad back into existence. And did you notice 'Grandpa Gold', the guy you touted as your family and how you'd fight for his survival just a year and a memory potion ago was suffering from a terminal heart condition?"

As Emma's expression faltered further, Death continued, "Naw, you sent him packing without hearing his side, declared him an irredeemable asshole while you happily skipped off to shag the dick who banged his wife - you know, the woman who's your baby daddy's mama. That's _another_ demerit right there! Being the wife in the 'the shalt not lay with thy brother's' doesn't give you a free pass, particularly when the sinner in question was a misogynist alcoholic who'd recently left you and your mother to starve to death after facilitating the mass murder of hundreds of innocent people whose corpses he hid under, who threatened to rape you at sword point and then stole your magic beans and left you and your entire town to die like the conniving, cowardly sociopath he is."

"He... he changed," Emma weakly defended, then recoiled at Death's furious bitch face.

"Oh, yes, he changed. Let us _count_ the ways!" Death exclaimed. "Did he apologize for the time he knocked out your sleeping princess friend and ripped out her heart so the woman who wanted to regress your marginally reformed step grandma into a murderous wackjob in a plot to become the Dark One by poisoning your kid's grandfather could it as a walkie-talkie? _Ahhh-no._ After he insisted he'd only been able to scrounge up enough memory potion for _you_ , after _sexually assaulting you_ on your doorstep, when _everyone_ knows kisses don't break memory spells - and the only scrounging he did was taking credit for your baby daddy's sacrifice, did he apologize for assaulting you and lying about how he got the potion and then declare that in the interest of showing gentlemanly decorum for his so-called 'friend's' tragically heroic sacrifice and just plain decent human behavior he would stop hounding you to fall in love with and sleep with him? _Ahhh-no._ "

Death tapped her foot in obvious annoyance at these things which Emma had let slide before continuing to rant, "Or when he left Prince Eric to die to get his ship back, then conveniently left out that it was _Blackbeard_ , the man he tried to murder after bailing on your parents, who actually helped Aril reunite with Eric, when you reached the wrong conclusion and intimated that you were so over Neal thirty-six hours after his funeral and might be inclined to hop into _his_ bed, did he tell you about that? _Ahhh-no._ He let you think he was a selfless here and then convinced the klepto mermaid not to tell you the truth on account of finding her stealing silverware aboard his ice queen bottled ship.

" _And_ ," Death continued, "let's not forget that when you said your heart was broken, he was _glad_ , because it meant he still had a chance to hound you into returning his affection, which he repeatedly did, invading your personal space, disrespecting your wishes. And when you revealed your fears of loss and the weight of your burden as the Savior, he laughed it off that he'd never die, made you solely responsible for his not doing bad things, and shoved his tongue down your throat. _Real_ gentlemanly. And yet you, appointed hand of justice in your little world of magic, responded to this rake's lying, killing, and disrespect for others by blindly pardoning him to get your ass tapped?"

Emma stammered out an ineffectual, "I... I..."

"I-I-I," snarked Death, moving her quill down the scroll. "And how about when Killy Stu told Rumplestiltskin he'd murder his wife if he didn't give him his hand back so he could feel you up after getting you properly liquored up on your date? And, of course, you never even considered that he was the one who beat the living shit out of your cockney-accented burglar friend and tossed him through the library window, because no other man better get close to _his_ princess pussy. Just like he beat the shit out of Rumplestiltskin for having the nerve to inquire about the well-being of his wife - you know, Milah, his original true love _and your son's grandmother_. That one's worth repeating, cause, girl, _that's nasty_."

Emma grimaced, averting her eyes. "It was two hundred years ago."

"Time does not decrease nastiness, honey child," argued Death. "And it was three hundred and change, actually. Two hundred was the number of years Baelfire spent being hunted Hunger Games style in Neverland by the child-abusing psychopath that your woobie buccaneer handed him off to _out of spite_."

"He said he had no choice," Emma tried to defend. "Pan would have killed his crew. He offered to let Baelfire stay..."

"You humans and the pathetic justifications you make just to fill your glory holes," the Grim Reaper sneered in disgust. "Just stop already before you dig yourself deeper into a fiery pit, Emma Swan. No good comes from trying to defend a man told your father he was only helping to save his life so he could get into your pants. Who told your first love, after discovering him not as dead as previously thought, that he'd fucked you proper in poor Baelfire's cave hovel during a time-out from looking for your kidnapped son."

Emma's eyes widened at that and Death snorted.

"You were just a prize to be won, honey child, and he was going to cheat and manipulate the competition in whatever way necessary. Tell you he'd fight honest and true for your heart, while trying to undermine his victim's chances by, say, cheering him on to ask you out, knowing full well, scared little shit you were who didn't want to past her past pain, that you'd leave the poor guy hanging, spending his last full day on that earth drinking a shitty cup of coffee and thinking he'd never be able to earn your forgiveness let alone your heart."

Emma wilted. "I didn't know he was the reason Neal was acting like a jerk. If I could back and have that cup of coffee..."

Death shook her head. "But you can't, honey child. You saw what you wanted and _didn't see_ whatever would get in the way of your easy path to a happiness that included never having to deal with anything emotionally _real_ or _hard_ ever again. Hence, you went from a potentially good woman into a replacement pirate whore. Love has nothing to do with what sick, twisted affair you've carried on."

"But... true love's kiss..."

"True love magic is like ninety-nine percent belief," reported Death with an eye roll. "How else do you think so many homicidal maniacs have true love? Your step grandma? _Paaalease_. That woman's a bona fide sociopath who can't love anything unless it revolves around her, and she was able to break a curse by pecking your kid on the forehead. When a crazy bitch who'd just declared she would murder your family and hundreds of innocent people all over again because doing so got her a fraudulently adopted kid she gas-lighted into declaring her a hero so she could feel like a good person can use true love, that shit is meaningless in the hands of mortals," the Angel concluded with a harumph.

"But... it breaks curses."

"Most anything can break a curse if you believe it will. Ya'll just decided that True Love's Kiss was the be all end all of curse breaking and ingrained it into the social fabric and magical gestalt so hard that any infatuated whacko stalker with a boner for a pretty stranger can break a curse. That's the problem with humans. Nine times out of ten, ya'll choose shallow wish-fulfillment over hard choices that would make you better, stronger, braver people - and the world a better place. Particularly in your enchanted world where wishes can actually come true."

Death amended with shake of her head, "Like bumping people off, for instance. You don't want to deal with romantic complications? Just wish poor Baelfire dead and _viola_."

Emma's eyes widened and she stumbled back a step. "You're saying... Neal died... because I... I wished... it?"

"Well, _duh_."

"But... but that's not what I meant. I-I was just scared of facing that pain again. I-I was hoping he _was_ dead when I thought he was dead, not wishing him dead when I found out he wasn't!"

"Magic's nothing if not remotely nuanced, honey child," said Death, "particularly in Neverland where it works on the whims of demons. What you ask of the Echo Caves, they giveth. You wanted easy, and that's what you got. Pan infused that magic into his alteration of the Curse. Regina the Drama Queen funneled that magic into the Enchanted Forest."

"So... Neal really died because of me?" Emma cried, distraught.

"You _wished_ it. And then your magic assured it - rather than reversing it. Granted, you were missing a few key memories that fueled the fires of your love, and that's not your fault, but, honey child, you didn't even _try_ to save him."

Emma once more dropped her eyes. "I didn't know how. I wanted to..."

"Naw, you wanted to run away," sneered Death. "You're always running from the hard stuff. Oh, taking down witches and monsters, that's the easy stuff. Dealing with the pain in your heart? That's _much_ too hard. Much easier to trade something strong and true _and full of complications_ for an epicly amoral love affair with your son's date-raping douchebag step grandfather."

Scowling, Emma tried to defend, "Killian wasn't a-"

"Are you kidding me, honey child? Don't even _try_ to deny that truth. Captain Hook was the Bill Cosby of the Enchanted Forest."

With a wave of Death's hand they were standing in a fun house, a hall of mirrors and each one with the image of a woman in Enchanted Forest clothes. Most were peasants, some were pirates, a few were women of nobility. Roughly half showed signs of suicide from ligature marks to bleeding wrists or lips stained with poison. All of them looked broken, haunted.

"Your _husband's_ victims. Women who made the mistake of having one too many drinks with a man who didn't take unconsciousness as a deal breaker... or who were just in the vicinity when he was desperate to get his dick wet before scuttling back to Neverland."

"He wouldn't," Emma tried to deny it. "He... he..."

0"He told you, the past him that you so happily made out with, that getting women drunk for sex was his tactic," Death shot back. "His future self warned you to be wary of his past self and then knocked the man out before he could do to you what he did to all these women. Did you think he was sticking his dick in coconuts for three centuries? That after he shoved you on your her back and said with a sword at your throat that _when_ he jabbed you with his sword, you'd feel it, that was anything less than a threat based on a history of violence?"

"I..." Emma fought tears and growing queasy sensation. "I... he changed... for me."

"Oh, honey child, don't delude yourself. Sociopaths and rapists don't change. People who use looks and charm to victimize others are ugly and cuel on the inside, and no amount of magic kisses and enchanted fucks with a princess'll make any damned difference.

"Look at your grandmother? Queen Eva was a bitch from start to finish. No matter how much she thought she'd changed, complimenting servants is sure as shit no recompense for ruining a woman's life, causing a child to be abandoned, and letting a rapist roam free to ruin the lives of dozens more women."

With a wave Death's hand, the woman in the mirrors changed, not quite so many, but still dozens of which she reported, "The other women Jonathan raped after Eva framed Cora for theft, that your grandmother did nothing to help, not them, not any other unfortunate peasants who, like her 'rival' for your grandfather's throne had their virtue taken and thus their lives destroyed. Most lacked the ambition and, dare I say it, psychopathy, to overcome the consciences of slut-shaming in that world. They were cast out by parents, husbands, employers, unable to keep their rape-spawned offspring even if they'd been so inclined. Many a child was left by the roadsides in the hopes of a kind stranger passing by. Most ended up taken by perverts, eaten by wild animals, or spirited off by Rumplestiltskin to some nefarious end. Rather ironically, like Eva herself, the raven-haired, blue-eyed, empathy-challenged rape spawn of your swashbuckling true love."

Emma's jaw fell open in horror and disbelief, before she managed to get out a strangled, " _WHAT!_?"

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AN: Yeah, incest, I went there! Between Eva's physical features and her being a cruel, back-stabbing opportunist who physically assaulted and laughed at peasant (plus the rape thing), it was a no-brainer. Poor Snow White, Captain Hook is her grandpa (which maybe explains why she kisses Floor so much). Death's opinion on Emma's family and the well-being of their kids comes from ouatcritic's, "No one here gives a shit about the well-being of their children if it interferes with getting laid." Credit on Emma's misinterpreted death wish to oncenadfuturekiki whose tumblr post on the matter of Emma's words inspired the magical mix-up plot device. Emma's actual dialogue was:

"When I heard you might be here, and that you might still be alive, I knew I should be happy, but I wasn't. I was terrified. I didn't understand why until now. From the moment I saw you in New York, in the instant you stepped back in my life, I knew. I knew I'd never stopped loving you. And before I even had a chance to take a breath, I… I lost you once more, and all that pain that I had pushed down for all those years, it just came… rushing back, and I… I didn't know if I could go through it again. I love you. I probably always will. But my secret… Is that I was hoping that this was a trick. I was hoping you were dead… Because it would be easier for me to put you behind me than to face all the pain that we went through all over again."

Next up: Emma has to face the psychological and emotional pain of the whole incest thing!


	3. The Incestuosity of True Love

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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CHAPTER THREE

THE INCESTUOSITY OF TRUE LOVE

Death rolled her eyes at Emma's expression.

"Yeah, that's right, honey child, you've been having marital relations with your great grandpappy. Makes the whole bit about Milah seem tame in comparison. Ain't no amount of douching gonna cleanse your insides of all that incestuous sexytime!"

"No..." Emma shook her head, fighting a panic attack. "That's not... he can't be..."

"Oh, he can be, and he is," said Death, arms crossed, nails tapping against her silky black robe. "How are you not surprised given the degree to which all your family relations have had relations with each other while secretly swapping their unwanted offspring like a seventies key party for infants? Not to mention the oddity of little Queen Eva being the only royal in the Seven Kingdoms in that generation with a half a brain, what with not being an inbreed imbecile like her husband. Just a pity it was a brain with syphilis and a genetic predisposition for a complete and utter lack of empathy."

Death clicked her tongue, amending, "You're just damn lucky that your son didn't bang one of his step daddy-slash-step-grandpa-slash-great-great-grandpappy's illegitimate children or grandchildren. He seems like a good kid, but when it comes to demerits on your life record, you don't wanna have to work off incest when your number's up. God tolerates all manner of debauchery from humanity, but doing the nasty with your blood kin is up there with genocide, diddling little kids, and using good people's hard-earned money to kill endangered species just because the Almighty gave you a small dick."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Emma uttered, clutching her stomach right before she vomited, splashing bile on her boots... and Death's robe.

Death made a disgusted face. "Well, at least it's an appropriate response to your family's debauchery. Maybe there's still hope for you yet."

Death returned attention to the scroll of demerits.

"Let's see... Petty thievery. Possession of stolen goods. Gave up your baby for what you said was his 'best chance', but really you were just a scared shitless kid who didn't want to put in the effort to be better than everyone said you were by raising the reminder of your perceived betrayer..."

Emma deflated in shame at that. "I did want him to have his best chance. I just... it couldn't be with me."

"Because you couldn't get past his paternity," Death retorted. "Both selfish and selfless. I suppose that one cancels out. Oh, I almost forgot the aiding and abetting adultery. Boinking a married man? That's not good, honey child..."

She made another check mark. "Oh, and the whole bailbonds system, now that's just taking advantage of the poor and destitute."

Another check.

"Got a lot of hypocrisy on here. Hauling in dirtbags while having one night stands with other dirtbags. You really are Great Grand Daddy's little privateer, aren't you? Which brings us to all the murdering... Your family and the murdering... I suppose, all things considered, it should be a positive that you never raped anyone. Or rape and then murdered them."

She licked the quill and shook her head, "Naw, scratch that. You lose points for sacrificing your soul on the grounds of a genocidal rapist murderer having earned her happy ending by not murdering her adulterous lover's first wife simply on account of your time travel making it so her crazy sister murdered said wife instead and then raped her honorless dbag of a lover who squatted in your baby daddy's apartment, tossed out your kid's grandfather in the middle of his having a heart attack, and then threw Neal Cassidy's worldly possessions into a dumpster such that anything your son might have been given to remember his father is now rotting under tons of garbage on Staten Island - all because your primary concern was the ensure the happy ending of a psychopath and an amoral chump. I mean, honey child, the woman raped and murdered your boyfriend, and you were willing to sacrifice your soul for her to get laid by some adulterous dolt she'd known for a week? What is wrong with you?"

Death reached out, smacking Emma on the forehead and causing her to stumble back.

Emma blinked and rubbed her forehead. "Wait... Regina...? She... raped... and killed Graham?"

"Girl, you dumb," sighed Death. "And that was before you fell down a world-splintering time portal. Did you not even read that Once Upon A Time book or do you just have the reading comprehension skills of a troll?"

"I... I never read the whole thing," Emma mumbled.

"Of course not. You were too busy glorifying an amoral clusterfuck from Charlie Manson's dream journal than to bother with something like a morality tale."

"Okay, I messed up," Emma conceded, "I messed up a lot. Please, I can... I can do better, be better. What do I have to do to be... be worthy of forgiveness?"

"Who do I look like Deepak Chopra and Stewart Smalley's fanfiction m-preg love child? You're good enough. You're smart enough. And your best teams are your friends and your siblings."

She shoved Emma in front of one the mirrors and stated, "You ain't good enough. You ain't smart enough. And your friends and siblings are psychopaths and sycophants who should have their asses thrown in prison, their tubes tied, and their balls cut off!"

Hands on her hips, Death stated, "I'm more like chocolate Dr. Phil with tits and scary-ass supernatural powers. And you're too much like Captain Hot Guy McDouchebag Great Grandpappy for your own good. Which, granted is not entirely your fault. You got shitty genetics and a crap upbringing. But damn, you'd think an extra dose of goodness and having your darker inclinations cut out would have led you to better choices before that all got resolved with a Dark One sized trainwreck."

Emma didn't know what to say to that, so she mumbled, "Yeah, well, I guess you thought wrong."

"Apparently," scoffed Death. "Of course, you were rather screwed either way. Between your papa's caring more about swords and saving damsels. And your mama's distraction with matchmaking and having a uterus... having a couple of tragically cliché stereotypes for role models wouldn't have done you any favors, so getting abandoned in an orphanage by a pint-sized compulsive liar freak of nature that should never have existed - damn fucking fairies - might have been the lesser of two evils."

She shook her head, amending, "Though proclaiming Dildocchio the bestest friend you've ever had since childhood sure as shit doesn't say much for your childhood or your concept of bestfriendship when he repeatedly screwed you, your son, and your baby daddy over for money, sex, and booze. Personally, I'd have thrown his ass in a woodchipper after he re-adult-sized, not hugged him and squeezed him and called him George. But that's just me. You know, a rational minded entity with a concept of justice and a lack of happy bits," said Death, drawing up her hemline to reveal a crotch like a Barbie doll.

"Yeah, take a good look. Beings can accomplish a lot when they're not constantly distracted by pussy."

Letting her skirt fall back around her ankles, the Grim Reaper continued, "You mortals need to get your shit together. Charity for transgressors is all well and good, but if you don't balance it out with justice for their victims, because you're too busy fucking the villains, then it's a crock of bullshit.

"In other words, honey child, you stink."

Emma hung her head in abject shame. "I get it. I've made a mess of my life. I screwed up as a mother and a friend and a lover, as a daughter, as a savior. I just... I never had time to think. It was always one crisis after the next and everyone was telling me what my happy ending was supposed to be that I just... I went along with it."

Death tapped her nails against her arms. "Yeah you did. And because of that, you failed at your most important tasks in life, Emma Swan. Instead of being a champion for those without a voice, instead of fighting for those who were wronged and incapable of fighting back, you sold out to royalty and rum. You stuck your head in the sand and cried ignorance and passed the blame off on others so you could pretend that you deserved Tallahassee.

"Well, honey child, you don't."

Emma shrunk back and Death continued, a long pink nail now pointed at her, "Frankly, I shouldn't even have to take the time to weed through the amoral cesspool that is your fairy tale princess existence to decide your fate - but then you had to go and die selflessly trying to save that girl..."

As Death made a "pshaaa" sound, Emma suddenly remembered the moment of her death. The screams were Cassidy's, Henry's ten year old daughter, caught up in yet another magical scheme against their family.

"My granddaughter, is she all right?" Emma asked, pleading. "Did I save her?"

"Can't answer that," replied Death with a shrug. "This is the moment of your death in a place out of time and space where either is possible, theoretically. So, Cassidy is like a dead cat that is and is not in a box. But don't get me started on Schrödinger. He was a real atheist piece of work."

After a pause, Death amended, "And technically speaking, the kid's not your granddaughter. Her mama knows it too, but instead of coming clean, she went and one-up'd your 'rents on the 'hypocritical namesaking' front. Named their son after the guy they told to go fuck himself when he wanted help keeping their family together - well, Little Lady Lampshade topped that by sheething some other sword in her hot little scabbard and popping out a bastard _not_ the son of the bastard she married. Shoulda named that baby Ashley Madison!"

While Emma looked increasingly distraught and dismayed, Death smoothed wrinkles from her cloak and declared, "Speaking of deviant nymphos, let's talk about that other spawn of your unfortunate womb whose having an incestuous fling with your brother."

Emma's head snapped up and her eyes widened. "What!?"

"Oh, yeah, and not just Prince Neal. She's also doing Roland _and_ his half-sister, sometimes the later pair at the _same time_. Y'all spawned a generation of freaks!"

"Oh God..."

" _Not_ God. That's the point. God's got nothing to do with the trainwreck you called home. There sure as shit is no place like it. But, thankfully, it won't be around much longer, what with Princess Fucks Her Uncle resurrecting the Dark One after all those warped-to-make-you-hot stories her daddy-slash-great-great grandaddy told her about your split personality romp on the Dark Side - hence that magical shitstorm that brought you here."

Emma's eyes widened even more. "My daughter is the Dark One!?"

"Oh, worse, honey child. That ancient, unquenchable evil latched itself onto the twice incestuous spawn in her belly and is about to bring forth a universe-ending apocalypse! Your magical multiverse is about to be wiped from existence. And the giant shitstorm that rains turds will leave a trail of clouds in the sky spelling out your name."

For a good minute Emma just stared, slack-jawed, trying to process that her child, _her incestuously conceived daughter_ was going to resurrect an evil she'd fought to destroy that would unmake existence.

"You have to let me do something!" she finally exclaimed. "Let me go back, let me stop her. I'm supposed to be the Savior, I-"

"Not anymore. Not here. _Dead is dead_ , remember?"

"But..." Emma argued, "what about magic? I died by magic, so... so that means there has to be a loophole, right?"

"Your baby daddy died by magic, and I didn't see you lifting a finger on that one. Instead you decided to take your sex-offender great grand pappy boyfriend on a trip to destroy an entire universe and replace it with a Xerox copy of someone's asscrack where good families are shattered to make bad people happy and good people don't exist. A universe that should be destroyed. This is existence preserving the rest of existence, honey child. That which was never meant to be, that which was brought into existence by the arrogance and folly of mortals cannot last.

"And thank the Pearly Gates for that!" Death exclaimed. "Do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved in dealing with deaths caused by fraudulently created universes? How much shit I have to shovel because of you? I'm Sisyphus carrying a giant turd boulder up Bullshit Mountain!"

Death conjured a scythe as she spoke, slamming the butt end against the floor with a resounding bang that shattered all the mirrors and the rather trashy looking woman suddenly looked damn scary, the floozy mall cop look melting away and replaced by glowing red eyes, a serpentine tail, and massive black wings that unfurled from her back.

"Nuh-uh," sneered Death. "Even if your coven of crackers tries some fancy shmancy necromancy shit to pull your unworthy ass back to your counterfeit Earth in your fraud of a universal construct, it ain't gonna happen. Y'all think you can play God, bring back who you want when you want, rewrite the laws of magic, chat with the dead whenever it's convent to solving your familial fiascoes and remake and entire plains of existence. Those are not the actions of a pure and humble a soul, a soul that could be trusted with such a task as saving an entire universe. Even if it was worth saving, which it's not."

"But... my family," Emma cried. "They're just going to... cease to exist?"

"Basically."

"So... I died trying to save Cassidy for nothing?"

"Yep. You died trying to save a kid that's not even your grandchild and whether you succeeded or, not dead cat or no dead cat, the box is going to cease to exist. Sucks, doesn't it?"

"Of course it sucks!" Emma shouted, flailing her arms in anger. "They're my family! My parents! My children!"

"Well, _some of them_ ," Death responded, "but also, _not really_. No more than you're you."

"I'm sorry, what the hell does that mean?" Emma exclaimed.

"I'm saying, if Dr. Seuss wrote a physics textbook, it'd be about the fuckfest that is your reality. Y'all are counterfeit copies of the originals, begot when you altered the past, destroyed that timeline, and created another one filled with small compounding changes like errors in a computer code on a course toward cascade failure with your evil grandbaby as the Blue Screen of Death. Basically, honey child, you're not real."

"I am real!" said Emma and began to cry. She'd thought it was hard to deal with essentially being two people when she became the Dark One, but this was making her head hurt even worse than lessons with Rumplestiltskin.

"You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying," Death remarked. "There's nothing to cry about."

"Nothing to cry about? You just said I created a universe that's going to implode and everyone I love is going to cease to exist!" Emma shouted. "And if I wasn't real," she said — half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous — "I shouldn't be able to cry."

"I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Death interrupted in a tone of great contempt and rolled her eyes. "I already told you, Honey child, nothing in this 'place' is real... though it's more tangible than the bullshit and nonsense of your world in a spiritual sense.

"See, God had nothing to do with your world. It all began with your mama killing your papa and splitting her heart to bring back the dead. That shit doesn't work. You can't bend the laws of magic like that without major consequences - that being your time travel. When you baby brother got his magic sucked out and you fell down that portal, the universe split, the original was destroyed, and what came after from those alchemal ruins on that barn floor - and your sweet step mommy's _resilient_ heart - is a bunch of freaky little homunculi with philosopher's stones for tickers. They look a lot like the real thing, but in these parts, they don't count for nearly as much as the real deal."

"What... what are you saying?" asked Emma, not wanting to believe it.

"I'm saying: what you are, honey child, is a replica for a dead woman, an aberrations of nature created by violating the flow of the natural universe, and as such, have no soul - _because I already weighed Emma Swan's soul_ years ago when she fucked it all up. You're just the fuck-up that came after, transmuted from your own remains at the moment of poor Emma's incineration.

"What you are," continued Death, "is an amoral, sadistic, sociopathic freak with a superiority complex that just like rest of you assholes derives pleasure from witnessing and inflicting human suffering and death, and perceives yourself as better. Sure, you're layered, complex individuals capable of love, grief, guilt and despair, and your superiority-complexes mask complementing inferiority-complexes, because you subconsciously know you're not real and desire to become fully human - but your incompleteness, your lack of identity, has made you _not_ seek to become the person you were meant to be, but rather someone different than Emma Swan was supposed to become: someone who would betray and defile all the good that came from your absent soul, all the good that was connected to it."

After a pause, Death concluded, "You always blamed Neal for your problems, for your inability to connect, to love, and that he's the one who resurrected the Dark One that you ended up becoming, well... deep down, the monster in you wants to prove you are not connected to the people who made you into an abomination. Emma Swan, on the other hand, merely wanted to have a mother and be accepted and loved as a person instead of being cast aside as an unwanted orphan. You... well... your mother is a freak just like you, and your _maker_ is the real you."

"Then... then what's to become of me?" Emma pitiably cried.

"Well, you got two options. You find your true self or you cease to exist."

"Find her?"

"Did you think all the original souls just disappeared?" retorted Death. "That universe ended, and the lot of them, your true self included, got thrown into limbo, unable to find peace - or damnation - so long as that little magical experiment endures."

Death waved a hand and the mirrors began to reform all around them.

0"Somewhere in this place," the Grim Reaper told her, "your true self resides. She's been waiting for you, suffering the torment of what she created. You must find her and free her. You must help her get home."

After a pause, Death amended, "Just try not to fuck up again, honey child. I can't take losing another bet to Gabriel. If I have to listen to another trumpet recital, I swear to my employer..."

With a snap of pink-nailed fingers, the Grim Reaper vanished, leaving Emma facing her own reflection and a rather unexpected existential crisis.

So she brushed away her tears, and went on as bravely as she could.

* * *

AN #1: Death's line about turd precipitation is Cisco to Ollie in Mr. Robot: "Listen, pussy. If you don't do what I say, then the giant shitstorm that rains turds later will leave a trail of clouds in the sky spelling out your name." Emma's conversation with Death about crying and reality as the final line (with one word change), if it seems familiar, is a scene between Alice and Tweedledee in _Through the Looking Glass_. And the bit about Homunculi is taken, specifically, from the _Fullmetal Alchemist_ portrayal of the homunculus. I haven't watched that show in years, so thanks to FMA Wikia for the refresher!

AN #2: Okay, here's where I need suggestions. What hell should I rain down upon Emma in this carnival of horrors? Who or what is in the mirrors now? What other trials (rides and attractions and villains perhaps?) should Emma endure on a possible road to redeeming herself for boning her own great grandpa... and, you know, the killing and stuff?


	4. Little Orphan Emma

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR

LITTLE ORPHAN EMMA

Wind was howling outside the walls, their water-stained peeling paper closing in with each rattling of the ice-covered windows.

Huddled in her small lumpy bed with its squeaky metal frame, Emma hugged her blankie tightly, her bottom lip quivering as she fought back tears.

She was three which meant she was a big girl and big girls weren't scared of wind.

Okay, maybe she wasn't so big and she was a little scared, but Emma didn't like this big old building or her lumpy bed with the funny smelling pillow or the bigger kids she had to share the too-big room with, kids that said mean things and one of 'em even stole her blankie and called her a baby when she started crying 'cause she couldn't find it!

Emma hated it here at the or-fin-ig.

Her mommy used to come in and read her stories when there were storms and she got scared. And her room had a nightlight too, to make sure no monsters got in.

The orfinig didn't have nightlights. Or mommies.

 _But neither do you_ , Emma reminded herself, scowling deeply into the fuzzy wool of her blankie.

The bigger kids also said that the lady she called "Mommy" wasn't really her mommy at all, and "Daddy" wasn't her daddy. They said the adults had talked about her and that it said in a "file" in a cabinet in the office where the mean lady with glasses had made her sit when she first got to the orfinig that no one knew her _real_ parents 'cause they had left her by the side of a road to die as a baby.

Emma would never have believed such a horrible mean story if the people she _thought_ were her Mommy and Daddy hadn't dropped her off here right before Christmas, just after she'd mailed her letter to Santa that she'd worked on super hard and covered in stickers and glitter.

Emma didn't understand. She'd been really good all year. _And_ super excited when _not_ -Mommy said she was going to have _two_ babies. She'd get to be a big sister!

That's what Emma had asked Santa for: for a baby brother or sister, and she was going to get _two!_ But _not-_ Mommy had said they couldn't keep Emma _and_ the new babies. She and not-Daddy said they were really sorry, that they hadn't thought they could ever have their own babies, and they'd loved Emma lots and she would always be a "Swan" but they just couldn't "ford" it.

The bigger kids said that her _not_ -parents had only taken her in as a baby 'cause people, like the ones that ran the orfinig, paid them to take unwanted kids.

They also said Santa wasn't real.

Emma hadn't wanted to believe _that_ , but then if Santa was real she'd still be in her house with her yellow pillow with a baby brother and sister and the She-Ra castle she'd also asked for.

She-Ra wouldn't be afraid of the storm!

But She-Ra had a sword and a cape and a flying horse and friends and even a brother. Emma didn't have any of those things. All she had was her blankie with her name on it that was probably made by her _real_ parents who hadn't wanted her either.

Emma wanted to believe that maybe they just lost her or she got stolen and they were looking for her. One day her real Mommy and Daddy would show up and take her home and she would have brothers and sisters and castles and swords... but not a tiara because tiaras were stupid and girlie and Emma only liked _some_ girlie stuff, but not the Disney princess girlie stuff that the other girls liked... which was why they didn't like her 'cause she said Sleeping Beauty was stupid 'cause she didn't do anything, just slept for years 'til some dumb prince woke her up, which was even more stupid than Snow White who ate some old weirdo stranger's poison apple! Emma was _three_ but she knew not to take food from strangers!

An apple sounded pretty good, though, Emma thought while trying not to sniffle. The food at the orfinig kind of sucked - she wasn't supposed to use that word, but the bigger kids said it all the time - and there was never any grilled cheese or onion rings and the hot chocolate was sucky powder stuff in water that never had cinnamon.

The windows rattled loudly and Emma burrowed further under the scratchy wool quilt.

 _Don't cry don't cry don't cry. Only babies cry and you are NOT a baby!_ Emma repeated in her head.

When the floorboards suddenly creaked, Emma _almost_ peed herself. Thank goodness she hadn't! She'd already wet her bed twice and got made fun of by the bigger kids and glared at by the mean handyman. She couldn't help it that the bathroom was _really_ far away and the floor was cold and the light had this really loud fan with it that woke up the kids by the door and they would get mad and call her a baby for not being able to hold it until morning.

Emma sniffled and hugged her legs tightly together.

Why was everyone here so mean?

"Emma?"

The voice calling her name startled Emma again. She let out a squeak and stuffed her blankie under her smelly pillow before declaring, "I'm not scared!" and peering over the edge of the quilt at the person in the near darkness.

The person wasn't one of the other kids but a lady but not one she remembered.

"Are you a pervert?" Emma demanded, eyes narrowed.

"I - what?" said the blonde lady.

"Becky said grown-ups who sneak into kids rooms at night are perverts," Emma explained, wary. Becky was an older girl who drew really weird pictures and had to see the cownslor lots 'cause she had bad dreams. Becky got to have her own room with a nightlight.

"No, I'm not a pervert," answered the blonde who bit her lip then added, "not exactly. I mean, I'm not here to hurt you, but... I'm not really a good person either. Someone told me to find you, that I was supposed to help you get out of this place, and maybe... maybe then I could be a better person if I did... or a person, I guess. I'm not really a person..."

Brows furrowing, Emma asked, "Are you a ghost? Or an angel? Or a fairy godmother?"

"Erm... no," replied the strange lady. "I'm a... a... homunculus."

"What's that?"

"Complicated," sighed the woman. "You... kinda created me."

Now that was weird, but Emma was good at telling when people lied. Of course, the lady could be crazy too.

"How'd I do that?" Emma asked.

"Magic," said the stranger.

Emma scrunched her face up in thought before considering, "Cause I wished on that star to go home? Are you gonna take me to my real parents?"

"I... well, I don't know about getting you to your parents, Emma, just... away from here," explained the lady. "You're not supposed to be here - well, not anymore. You ended up here because you created me by accident, but I didn't know that. I thought I was you, but you've been stuck here while I was doing bad, selfish things."

That didn't make a lot of sense, but the lady seemed to believe it. They were the same person? But the lady was all grown up! They _did_ have the same chin, though, so Emma asked, "Are you from the future?"

"Ah... kind of."

"And... you can really take me home? Is it near the beach? I've never been to the beach."

"Um... sure."

Now the lady was lying. Emma's eyes narrowed. "You're lying! You're a crazy lady! CRAZY LADY! PERVERT! PERVERT!" she shouted, hoping to wake up the other kids, but somehow none of them woke up! Had the crazy lady drugged them?

Emma scrambled out of bed.

"Emma, wait!" the lady tried to grab her, but Emma was fast!

Scurrying past the other beds, Emma made for the door to the hall.

But it was locked!

How had the lady gotten in if it was locked? Did she really have magic?

"Emma, please stop!" called the lady, trying to grab her again.

Emma felt a shock like static electricity and miraculously the door opened! She slipped through the space and into the hall with its dimmed, flickering lights.

"HELP! HELP!" Emma cried. "THERE'S A CRAZY LADY TRYING TO KIDNAP ME!"

On the stairs Emma stumbled and dropped her blanket. _No!_ She scrambled back to retrieve it, but the crazy lady got it first!

"Give it back!" Emma shouted.

"Only if you come with me, Emma."

"No! You're a bad lady! You said so yourself!"

"It's not my fault!" argued the lady. "It's how I was made. I'm not a whole person. I don't have a soul!"

Okay, now she was _really_ bonkers! The old lady who read Bible stories had mentioned souls, and _everyone_ had a soul!

Emma mustered her courage, kicked the lady in the leg, grabbed her blankie, and continued running. She ran and ran through the hallways until she came to the big EXIT door which was _supposed_ to be locked, but the mean handyman always left it propped open so he could smoke, even when it was super cold out!

"EMMA!" called the lady as she slipped out into the-

Not backyard of the orfinig.

Emma gasped. She was in... a carnival? It was empty and dark and creepy but she could make out the dark shapes of the rides against the moonlight sky and it smelled like old popcorn and cotton candy... and someone had peed nearby. _Gross._

A hand suddenly was fastened around her wrist and Emma screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth and the lady started to glow and Emma started to glow and then everything got bright and -

It was like the memory potion moment all over again, but a thousand times worse since it was combined with the feeling of dying in reverse, the ripped-apart-pieces being shoved back together.

Emma ended up on her knees, doubled over, heaving and lightheaded.

But at least she hadn't peed herself.

"Well well," a nasally baritone declared and Emma awkwardly stood and turned to face a pale-faced man with dark hair wearing a hoodie and jacket and looking rather bored. He raised an eyebrow at her, smirked, and amended, "You're shorter than I expected."

* * *

AN: Another chapter! Yippie! And a cameo by Metatron from _Dogma_! I didn't include what "Pride" faced to get to Emma. Sorry about that, but Serendipity was off doing shots somewhere. I do have a direction for this story, if you stick with it. It _is_ ultimately Swanfire, though the next eight or so chapters will not feature Neal. This is Emma's journey of self-reflection.

Next up: The world(s) according to Metatron.


	5. Carnival of Carnage

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Warning: Contains a recent spoiler for 5x10... yes, 5x10, because this show is really called _Once Upon A Time We Blew Our Set Security Budget on Hook Posters._ On the bright side, I understand Adam Horowitz lost A LOT of followers today after this #nospoiler. I mean, who wants to watch a show that consistently and pathetically ruins its own plot twists (most of which turn out to be shitty CS rape culture fanservice) by letting paparazzi lurk around the location sets - let alone follow the asshat who will, no doubt, deny that anything has been spoiled, just as he did with the Emma-Becomes-The-Dark-One YouTube video leak.**

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE

CARNIVAL OF CARNAGE

"Who are you?" Emma warily asked, "Saint Peter?"

"God no," the dark-haired man answered in a snarky tone. "And I'm not God either. I'm an Angel. A Seraphim in fact. So don't get your hopes up that I'm your Guardian Angel."

"Well, if you were, you'd be a really crappy one," retorted Emma with a scowl, then she considered, "Is that really a thing? Guardian Angels?"

"For real world people, sure, to a point. For your kind? Fun fact: fairy tale characters don't have Guardian Angels. No real point when their freewill is constrained by the literary parameters of the world in which they were born. It would be a waste of resources."

"Constrained?" asked Emma, confused, and the Angel rolled his eyes.

"Asks the woman who literally had a spell cast to augment her freewill. Yes, _constrained._ No matter how hard any of them try to 'play against type' they will always end up being the archetype they were written as in the allegories, cautionary tales if you will, that the Muses inspired to warn humanity about the dangerous vices of mortality and nudge them to favor their virtues. Fairy talers lack the full capacity of freewill in order to inspire humanity to use theirs for good rather than evil."

"That doesn't really seem fair," Emma commented with a frown. "Creating people that don't have real freewill."

"Tell me about it," sighed the Angel. "We Angels don't have freewill. Of course, we can also bask in the glory of the Almighty without our brains melting out of our ears. You all have magic. It's a tradeoff."

"Kind of a sucky one right now," complained Emma, crossing her arms like a child.

"Well," conceded the Angel, "your situation didn't exactly play out the way it was intended. Thanks to that Disney fool, the cautionary tales ended up rebranded to inspire hope, which is all well and good in the fictional connotation, but the living, breathing characters started getting ideas that didn't fit with how they were made. Of course, they weren't meant to be alive at all in a literal sense, more of an... imaginary one. Don't make me try to explain how God's imagination works, or _my_ head might yet explode."

After a pause, he continued, "Anyway, things went awry after life was accidentally breathed into those stories giving the characters and their realms bona fide existence... even if their worlds are essentially timeless. Another hindrance to the freewill thing. People can't really change individually or as societies if time is essentially standing still, whether it's stuck in a feudal system, the Victorian age, or Boardwalk Empire," he concluded, scowling particularly hard at the last.

Frowning as well, Emma said, "So... you're saying... everything in that book... it really _is_ just stories? Or that it was meant to be, and my being here and everyone I know is just one big divine accident?"

"From a certain point of view _everything_ in existence was once just a story to God," said the Angel, "but essentially, yes. You're people are more or less a drunken one night stand pregnancy. It doesn't mean God doesn't love you - you exist, after all. But the universe would have been a lot easier to manage had things gone according to plan."

He raised a brow and intoned, "But as interesting as all of this is, shouldn't you be more interested in asking about the whole _you being dead_ thing? Most people are a bit less blaze about an unexpected demise."

Emma shrugged and that and answered, "I kinda got the gist of that from... my... not better half. The whole thing where I destroyed a universe and created some soulless version of me that inhabited a fake reality where everyone's going to die because some kid that not-me had is having a kid that's the resurrected Dark One."

"Which you really should have seen coming," quipped the Angel, "when you and your one-handed shmoopie got your names conjoined on that sword."

"Excalibur?" Emma replied. "But... I thought the sword was a legendary good."

The Angel snorted. "Yes, a good that broke off and became tied to the most heinous immortal evil to ever possess a human soul. Did you lot honestly think Excalibur is the Flaming Sword?"

"Um..." Emma muttered, not clear on what that meant and her ignorance drew a sour look.

The Angel quoted, "'He placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.'"

At Emma's clueless blink, he growled out, "Genesis 3:24. Honestly, you morons immersed yourselves in Grail Lore and couldn't even be bothered read the Bible? God really screwed up with you lot!" he huffed.

After shaking his head in dismay, he explained, "Excalibur is not that sword. It's not meant to protect the tree of life - or it wouldn't have been embedded in a rock. If it was anything good, it would never have been tied to the Dark One, and uniting the halves in the name of true love would have actually required true love, not a couple of horny jackasses who passed on protecting family for some shallow bought of eye-fucking and dry-humping. By getting yourselves branded on that blade, created by Lucifer, you cemented your roll in creating a true physical form for the Dark One that cannot be controlled by any weapon."

"Great," groaned Emma.

The Angel raised a brow. "That's it? You all but signed over your soul to the Devil - save for, lucky you, you'd already lost it, and 'great' is all you have to say?"

Emma shrugged. "What do you want me to say? After all the shit I went through even without all her memories, I think I've pretty much lost the ability to be shocked by anything. Death. My love life sponsored by Satan. Why not? And all of this... whatever it is," she waved her hand around, "is just another crazy-ass adventure I got stuck in.

"I could have done without being a terrified child though," she concluded.

"It's essentially what you are," the Angel explained. "Everyone becomes their innermost self when trapped in Purgatory. For all the titles you have been assigned, the person you have tried to be, you will always be, at your core, that frightened little orphan girl."

"Pan was right then."

"Psychopaths are good at reading people. Your boyfriend-slash-great-grandfather for example... who passed that on to your grandmother. Thankfully, that gene got weeded out by your mild-mannered, if simple-minded, grandfather who was more of a weird shoe fetish type pervert than a rapist - and your father's side of the family which, a certain elevated interest in bloodlust aside nurtured in your uncle by King George, tended more toward depressive than functional alcoholism and douchey but harmless vanity."

Scrunching her face, Emma retorted, "So, what you're saying is that I should have given up drinking and promiscuous sex and maybe I wouldn't have screwed everything up?"

"Everyone has vices, Emma. Those aren't your most damning ones," replied the Angel. "Yours is your pride. Hence the 'not-you' that you created."

"My pride?" asked Emma, brows furrowed.

"There are seven heavenly virtues," he explained, "Chastity, Abstinence, Liberality, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility. And seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, the epitome of humanity's tendency toward selfishness: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride. Each is a form of Idolatry-of-Self wherein the subjective reigns over the objective."

"Um...?"

"Subjective information - personal opinions, interpretations, points of view- these take precedence over factual or statistical evidence. Humans act _selfishly_ rather than showing empathy inspired by facts. An example being rulers who lay out massive feasts for one even as their subjects starve... a rather common practice in your birth world, actually, even for your so-called virtuous parents."

The Angels sighed, amending, "But then those fairy tale realms tend to be defined by a sort of caste system in which all are born into what fate has meant for their life barring a visit from a fairy godmother, those Angelic pretenders who market fairy dust like meth."

Again the Angel paused, shaking his head in disgust, then continued, "You were meant to break that cycle, Emma. You were meant to be a paradigm shift, the first child born _after_ all that was written who could bring those realms into a new age - and world, i.e. _the real world_ \- where both heroes and villains could break free of their clichés. Unfortunately, between the meddling scribe muddling up your soul and your prideful pratfall down a time portal..."

He shook his head and explained, "Basically, you are here, Emma, because of mortal sin, those likely to destroy the life of grace and charity within a person, to _corrupt the soul_ \- and in cases where magic is involved can actually spawn soulless facsimiles - in your case, a homunculus begot of pride that literally came before your fall, took your form upon your death, and left you trapped in Purgatory whilst that dark facsimile of you usurped your life... or what amounted to it in that counterfeit world unsanctioned by God."

The Angel told her then with a slight shrug, "Of course, your soul was already damaged by that Sorcerer's spell, your potential for darkness cut out, given to another, replaced by Lily's potential for good, which is an unnatural state for any being, even of the fairy tale persuasion, particularly given you were meant to herald in a new age, be like your real world, free-will-gifted cousins. And because she was _not_ meant for some greater purpose, everything was a bit lopsided, ill-fitted. You were meant to be, essentially, a _real person_ , but you got this... fictional, if you will, 'capacity for good' tacked on and all of the compounding edits in your story by other fairy talers trying to shape your path basically left you a hot mess."

"Does that mean I'm off the hook for the whole universe creating and destroying thing then?" Emma asked, hopeful, a hope that was dashed by the Angel's sour expression

"You _still_ had enough freewill to _not_ run into that barn, even if your conscience was always a bit embattled and ill-fitted," stated the Angel. "Lacking potential darkness might have drawn you toward those with blackened hearts, and some... overly-aspirational goodness might have kept you from fully giving in to that temptation, but nothing told you to run headfirst into a magical portal with no fucking clue how to stop it."

Emma winced. "Yeah... that... I messed up."

"If by 'messed up' you mean the universe and 'at which point it began its descent into the whirlpool of tasteless garbage that it sits at the bottom of now', then yes."

Emma gave him a sour look, then letting out a sigh, she picked at the shoelace on her wrist, admitting, "Everyone said I was the Savior and I had to save them and I... I didn't want to disappoint them. I wanted to be... be important after growing up with everyone saying I was worthless."

"I know you did," the Angel nodded, not without empathy. "Subjectivity over objectivity. You acted because people said you were the Savior, not because you knew yourself and that you had the ability to save everyone. And it was growing up being treated like you didn't matter and couldn't achieve anything that made your pride and ambition so dangerous when you got the first taste of fame. Any intelligent being could have foreseen that. Instead, you got stuck with the Blue Fairy and a puppet trying to set you on a righteous path, to teach you humility in the worst possible way and then crown you their messiah without any forewarning or training and no one to have your back who wasn't really in it for their own selfish agenda.

"You were used badly," he conceded, "and I'm sorry for that. Even God can't anticipate everything where freewill is involved. Inserting those damn authors into the fairy tale landscape was always asking for trouble, particularly after the Muses stopped inspiring them. Really, you were probably doomed no matter what. God tends to put too much faith in humanity's capacity for goodness. And it didn't help that there wasn't enough goodness in those stories to make up for it. I mean, biological parents dropping like flies, teenage girls cannibalizing their boyfriends, everyone with an evil and unnaturally attractive and young stepparent... and the amount of borderline or _actual_ incest..."

"I would never have kissed Hook if I'd known he was my great grandfather!" Emma defended, disgusted.

"And that he was your first love's stepfather?"

"I didn't know that either!" Emma huffed. "Not _me_ me. Other me didn't care, I guess, but she was apparently an amoral mess even without being the Dark One. And, okay, maybe it was a lapse in judgment on my part not to figure that stuff out, to ask questions, to be suspicious, but I was a mess after Neverland, okay? Then I got my memories taken, my mom was nine months pregnant, Neal died, Henry didn't know what was going on and then he did and everyone was pressuring me and I just couldn't _think_."

"You could have, but you chose not to take the time. It's a nasty habit of yours, Emma," the Angel argued. "Why deal with emotional issues today that can be put off until tomorrow? It's easy to pretend that emotion is a hindrance to making the right choice.. It's not so easy to deal with the consequences of those choices. Of course, emotion can just as easily lead one astray as it did Neal. Hence, having the full freewill to which one is entitled is rather important."

Brows furrowing, Emma asked, "Will I get to see Neal? Is he... is he okay? I mean, I know he screwed up, resurrecting the Dark One, and he left me, but... he wanted to do the right the thing."

"Baelfire has faced the consequences of his actions - and inactions as in the case of keeping from you things that he should not have."

Emma sniffed. "Like magic and August - _and that Hook was with his mom_. Always his stupid, chivalrous not wanting to interfere with my destiny or love life or whatever by not telling me stuff. What the hell was wrong with him!?"

The Angel gave her a look. "I'd say three centuries of being repeatedly rejected and or abandoned gave Baelfire - and Neal - some issues. He'd lost twice to his stepfather, his mother's love and just basic human decency. That the love of his life and mother of his child would similarly be enticed by the pirate's overbearing charms and sexual dominance over his being respectful and patient... well, it's probably exactly what he expected. "

"But he still tried to give me space," Emma muttered, annoyed and a bit ashamed how she'd treated him for that.

"Indeed, he did. What he expected didn't change Baelfire's approach to the situation or his deep love for you and your son, Emma. He did want you to be happy above all else, even if the path you chose for that happiness was the same that had brought him only misery. _That_ is real 'true love', not the shallow, cliché bullshit couched in flowery language that your storybook histories and their people spout like it means anything more than what it truly is: bad poetry that came from Serendipity inspiring some bards after an all night bender."

A brief silence stretched between them as Emma continued to fidget.

"I do love Neal, you know," she finally said. "I never stopped. I just... not being with him, and the risk of losing him again, seemed easier. It wasn't."

"No, it wasn't. You could have saved him in the forest that day if you'd just channeled your love."

"I did same thing with the portal. I had the power and I didn't use it. I didn't even think that I could," Emma lamented. "So what's the point of all of this power if I never know when I have it or how to use it? All I do is end up hurting the people I love!"

"Because you have never allowed yourself to love completely," said the Angel, "though given how your soul has been tampered with, that's not entirely your fault. Love is complicated and requires both dark and light, all the good but also all of the bad within the mortal soul. You did your best with what you had, tried, subconsciously, to borrow from others with your magic what you lacked, but that worked poorly in a world not meant for magic and a soul is unique besides so you can't swap in parts from another if a piece goes missing and have it work right. Souls aren't like cars."

Shaking his head, the Angel complained, "Which made just one big mess with your parents and your mother splitting her heart to revive your father which forced him to share her soul to sustain his life force and quite frankly turned the both of them into a pair of useless morons since their souls were wanting and ill-suited to the Land Without Magic to begin with A pity. I liked them both - in as much as I ever like any humans - until that 'lack of free will' written into their story regarding their being soulmates and _twu wuv_ ," he made a disgusted face, "undermined the whole mess and became the catalyst for your fall from grace."

After a pause, he told her, "So, essentially, to some degree, God is at fault for what ultimately became the death of a universe. Which is why I am here to give you the chance to fix your soul. Regaining your pride was just the first step. All of your vices, they're still essentially neutered by that spell, hindered by the goodness that isn't yours, keeping you from succumbing to temptation, a danger that all mortals are basically required to be capable of doing for the whole freewill thing to matter and for souls therefore to be judged accordingly and sent to Heaven or Hell."

The Angel, without warning, thrust a hand into Emma's chest. There was no resistance as he yanked out - a pulsing orb of light?

"You were expecting a heart? You're dead. You don't exactly need a heart in the afterlife."

Brows furrowing, Emma watched as he waved a hand over the orb and little tendrils of light floated around his fingertips leaving the orb a bit less glory... and revealing a void at the center. That was the emptiness she'd always felt, Emma realized, the part of her soul that her parents had removed and replaced with something that didn't fit, that could never fill it right.

The Angel waved his hand and the tendrils changed from light to... absence of light that flowed quickly into the void.

"Good as... well.. not new, but certified used," said the Angel before shoving it back into Emma's chest.

It burned, but with cold rather than heat.

"One intact soul. Now, the fun begins."

"Fun?" Emma gasped while holding her chest.

"Maybe 'fun' is the wrong word for it. You have your freewill, Emma, your darkness. It's time you were tempted."

The Angel snapped his fingers and suddenly she wasn't sitting on a bench anymore, she was in a gondola... in the Tunnel of Love?

* * *

AN: Thanks to ouatcritic on tumblr for that description of OUAT. I don't know exactly "at which point it began its descent into the whirlpool of tasteless garbage that it sits at the bottom of now" but I couldn't have worded it better!

Next up: It's the Looooove Boat...


	6. Badly Written Tunnel of Love

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note 2: Apologies for delay in updating this story. Life has been busy lately. I further apologize if this chapter isn't up to snuff - not that I think the story itself has been thus far, sadly - as I finished it without a great deal of editing to try and get** _ **something**_ **posted. Let me know of any glaring grammar/syntax/continuity errors and I will fix it in as timely a fashion as I can!**

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CHAPTER SIX

BADLY WRITTEN TUNNEL OF LOVE

The boat was stuck.

And the ridiculously poofy red ballgown Emma was wearing did not make getting out of the thing onto the narrow service catwalk easy. She _really_ hated fairy tale clothes, never really getting used to them, even after a variety of experiences (sort of since it wasn't _exactly_ her) being magically forced into them.

She'd found herself wearing this satiny, corseted torture device, complete with sparkly tiara, and riding in what looked suspiciously like a Disney World swan boat through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride... if there had been an apocalypse and both were left to rot for a couple dozen years.

It could have been worse, Emma supposed, as far as wardrobe choices went. She could have been stuck in that white dress with flowers in her hair, as dressing guests like extras from _The Wicker Man_ was apparently all the fashion rage in Camelot... which seemed like a far less amazing place when it was actually populated by idiots and sycophants in Medieval Times Dinner  & Tournament outfits, and King Arthur was sort of evil and kept Merlin as a tree while showing off his hot young trophy wife at parties _every night_ for ten years while waiting for someone else to restore Excalibur to its fully-intact-but-still-utterly-useless-as-a-sword-what-with-the-wavey-blade self.

And _that_ had worked out real well!

Prophesies were such bullshit, and Emma was sick and tired of her life - and death, it seemed - being ruined by them.

And magic.

And stupid costumes...

Her gilded crocodile heals that pinched her toes - and which she couldn't fathom why Rumplestiltskin would ever conjure when he _hated_ the pirate who'd dubbed him "The Crocodile" - caught on the hem of her dress as she tried to extricate herself from the boat.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeek!"

Emma landed in the murky water with a splash and momentarily panicked at the weight of her dress pulling her down, until she realized the water was only three feet deep.

"You," a voice startled her, "look more like a drown rat than a swan, my dear."

Sloshing around to face the speaker now in the boat, Emma frowned at the matronly woman wearing the same blue gown she'd had on for much of the brief period that Emma had known her.

" _Cora_ ," Emma spat - while also actually spitting out some nasty water.

"Still upset I tried to kill you, I see, even though you are quite dead by your own idiocy," sighed Cora. "Doesn't it count for anything that your mother murdered me... after your grandmother ruined my life?"

"I dunno," Emma retorted, glaring, as she hauled herself back onto the boat, "considering you teamed up with her rapist father to try and murder me. And calling me an idiot doesn't help!"

"Her rapist father who is also your great grandfather that you slept with many times and whose evil spawn you birth and is herself the progenitor of the end of the universe, you mean? I stand by my descriptive!"

Glaring, Emma grated out, "That. Wasn't. Me."

"Well, you _did_ kiss him."

Emma scowled. "In Neverland. I'm sure there was pixie dust or something. _And I didn't know he was my douchebag ancestor who screwed over my kid's father after screwing Neal's mom, okay?_ "

Crossing her arms, Emma concluded, "With all the debauchery in _your_ family, you've no right to get judgey!"

"Perhaps not," conceded Cora, "but I've never cared much for right and wrong. And regardless of where your soul was residing at the time of the debauchery, that Emma Swan was and _is_ part of you," tutted Regina's mother while leaning on a parasol. "Don't be like my youngest and pretend all of the darkness in your heart, all of your selfish and depraved inclinations, were some convoluted conjuration of circumstances beyond your control. Even your bad self recognized _Regina;s_ selfishness. More than your _good_ self, actually, who wanted to be her friend."

"More like just not trying to kill each other while fighting over Henry," Emma argued, ringing out her dress. "She taught me some magic, that's it. Maybe I thought she had the potential to become a good person-"

"Good person." Cora rolled her eyes. "Good can be so _blinding_. And welcoming sociopaths into one's family never ends well, particularly when we all are what we were written to be. You were supposed to unwrite our destinies but now you're here, all of your good potential wasted while your dark passenger ran amuck, destroying everything you were meant to rebuild, making a mockery of family, hope, and true love - turning our world that could have been so much more into a parody of the worst kind. Quite honestly, I'm ashamed to have known you."

"Seriously?" Emma scoffed. " _You're_ ashamed? You did just as many awful things - and if _you'd_ succeeded in becoming the Dark One-"

"I would have killed my lover, not elevated him to godlike status," argued Cora with a judgmental scoff.

"Yes, you succeeded in poisoning Gold using Hook as your pawn, congratulations," Emma returned with a roll of her eyes.

Cora cackled at that. "Oh, I didn't mean Rumple, though it's true that the pirate was as much my pawn as my lover. _Love_ certainly had nothing to do with it."

Now Emma's jaw slackened slightly in shock and disgust. " _You_ slept with Hook?"

"If it makes you feel better, it wasn't consensual on his part."

"That's disgusting!"

"It was justice. He raped your great grandmother - and many other woman. Of course, I had to remove that from his memory for him to be of any use to me. I did intend to restore it before killing him. Sadly, his unnaturally long life went on a bit longer still than it should have, but there is some consolation in knowing he has to watch, helpless, as his own progeny destroys existence. That should be quite entertaining."

"I wouldn't call it that," groused Emma.

"No, you wouldn't," Cora agreed. "Your family has never been in possession of a sense of humor on any side. Quite a pity. The two best things in life are sex and laughter. Of course, when you're sleeping with your own kin..."

"You had your daughter marry your ex-fiancé!"

"Whom I never slept with. And I'm rather certain neither did Regina as Leopold suffered from terrible erectile dysfunction - hence having only the one bratty child. Frankly, instead of wishing that genie his freedom, he should have wished for a hard cock. He could have freed Regina from her pointless position and married and impregnated some other wench, produced an heir possibly more intelligent and capable of running a kingdom than your mother. And Regina might yet have run off with her forest hobo. And I could have used that silly old sorcerer hack pupil of Merlin's to become the Dark One without getting the pirate involved to murder Rumple and we all could have lived happily ever after... but, alas, we are here thanks to Leopold's limp dick and small brain. Well, you're partly here because he got it up the one time by rubbing the ashes of the one known remaining Pegasus feather on his penis-"

"Gaaaa! Stop talking about my grandfather's junk!" Emma howled while flopping down onto one of the benches with a loud wet _slap_ of her ruined red gown.

"Would you rather we went back to talking about your great grandfather's genitals with which we are both intimately familiar? I always thought the birthmark on his foreskin rather looked like a-"

"NO!"

Cora cackled again, looking down her nose at the scowling Savior. "Oh, you poor dear, wallowing in your self-loathing at your sexual depravity! I know how that goes. I paid the price as well. You can console yourself, I suppose, that at least you didn't rape any innocents. That's quite a rarity in this family. You only befriended and slept with them and had their hereditarily-predisposed-to-raping children. I suppose the gene skipped a few generations... or was seeded back in. Killian never had a problem getting aroused, even when he didn't want to be. The wonders of male physiology..."

Emma dropped her head into her hands. "Please, go away!"

"Now you do sound like Regina," complained Cora, slowly pacing the deck, twirling her parasol as though it was a fine sunny day for a boat ride rather than being stuck in a mildewed catacomb.

"She never appreciated my advice," the woman lamented. "If she'd just married Nottingham and instated him as king and had a son... but no, she rejected him, downed that infertility potion, and instead of finding happiness by manipulating a powerful man and his descendants, she spent forty years wearing ridiculous costumes and raping that flea-infested huntsman before throwing herself at that forest hobo who couldn't tell her from his dead wife - from the other woman he slept with who murdered her the second time around. Honestly, I didn't raise that girl to be _that_ stupid. In no _untainted_ universe would Regina have sacrificed everything respectable about herself for a useless and dishonorable doormat of a man just because a _fairy_ told her to..."

Emma blinked, brows furrowing at a realization finally in the middle of Cora's prattling, and her head snapped up as she gasped, "Hold on, Regina _raped_ Graham?"

Rolling her eyes, Cora paused to give her an exasperated look. "Goodness, but like your mother you really did get Leopold's stupidity, didn't you? Yes, dear, _Regina raped her sex slave and then killed your boyfriend_. It seems the price of my acquisition of magic after being raped by that rake of a gardener was for my progeny to indulge in the sexual assault of innocent - if not always intelligent - men. Magic has a rather despicably ironic sense of humor."

"Yeah, no kidding," Emma grumbled and picked a condom wrapper out of her cleavage. At least it wasn't a _condom_.

"Oh, don't look so glum, dear," the older woman objected. "You might have checked out early, but your nasty side had a few more years of sowing her wild oats, and she's part of you now. Embrace that depravity, the _power_ she acquired that you would never been strong enough to - what with all of that conscience and good-heartedness."

Emma glared and snapped hotly, " _She was the Dark One_. That's not something to be proud of!"

0"Yes, well, neither is sleeping with my father-in-law, but it got the job done."

"You slept with your _father-in-law_ too? Did you sleep your way through the Enchanted Forest or something?"

Again, Cora paused and leaned against her parasol like an evil Mary Poppins... though, to be fair, her eldest daughter had pulled off the costume better in her midwife guise.

"Women acquire power in two ways in that world, dear, sex and magic," explained Cora as though speaking to a child... which made the topic rather creepy. "Xavier was far more skilled than his son, though not nearly as kinky as Rumple. But then, given the ridiculous prices required to deal with the Dark One, a throne for my daughter and the occasional outbreak of genital warts was the better option."

Emma blinked and then glared. "Wait, _you_ gave Hook HPV!? I got HPV from _you_!?"

"Technically, you got it from Zelena's father if you want to play the degrees of separation card," said Cora. "The syphilis he got from Milah."

"Wait... _syphilis_?"

"Yes, Cupid's Disease is eating your brain - or it was while you were alive, helping what was left of your conscience make all sorts of terrible decisions. You probably should have checked the pirate's mouth for soars before drunk kissing him in Neverland. Also, on top of your HPV and syphilis, you got Monkey Herpes from that pet of my eldest daughter's. Basically, dear, in life your vagina was a petrii dish of nastiness, so it's no wonder you spawned a psychopath. But that's what happens when you lead with lust in a world that's gone off the deep end."

Emma sputtered out, "I don't... I'm not..."

"A slut? Becoming the Dark One let out your inner slut," said Cora. "You became a sexual deviant as part of your uncontrolled desire for power. As required by the stereotypes of the magical construct of the world in which we were born, sexual deviancy experienced by men is considered a romantic archetype while women who display sexual aggression are automatically evil. It's how things are written."

"That's terrible!"

"I know," sighed Cora. "You'd think that God being a woman, She wouldn't be such a terrible feminist. But then, our stories were written so long ago and we weren't ever meant to be living, breathing beings. Humanity is the Almighty's masterwork. Fairy Tale Land and all that lays within it or was brought forth from it is God's badly edited fanfiction that was never meant to be given true existence."

"How do you know about fanfiction?" asked Emma, bewildered.

"In between examining the various bobbles Henry had Regina and sniffing her clothes I came across a box of her printed out fanfictions of that _Fifty Shades_ book, with her and Graham replacing the characters - and roll-reversed, of course... and rather more sexually dominating in a non-consensual-"

"OKAY I GET IT!" Emma cut her off, not wanting to hear any more about Regina's rapist tendencies. Apparently, she'd been right at the start that Regina was a sociopath - and maybe that wasn't as bad as a psychopath like Zelena, but clearly there _was_ some sexual deviancy in that family that she didn't want to touch with a ten foot pole...

Though a ten foot pole would be helpful in getting this boat closer to shore...

Cora sighed and remarked, "The great tragedy of my life and yours that binds us, Emma Swan, is that I died trying to escape the confines into which I was written, the 'destiny' that shackled me to servitude and submissiveness. And that you were supposed to break those shackles for all of us. Instead you failed us all."

Smirkingly, she amended, "Perhaps if you'd applied your ambition toward a more concrete goal instead of 'happy endings for everybody' and leaping into every magical fiasco before you looked, you would have had more success."

"Nobody told me what was at stake!" Emma complained. "And seriously, lady, _you can't judge me when your brilliant plan resulted in being killed by your own daughter after trying to kill one of your crazy lovers!_ "

"By _accident_. Regina didn't mean to kill me, obviously," Cora huffed. "I had successfully manipulated her _again_ into believing that I had her best interest at heart. It was your meddling mother, Eva's spawn - the pirate's _grand_ -spawn - who convinced her that I could love her more if I had my heart within my physical body... even though Regina shortly thereafter deluded herself into thinking she could love just as fully with or without her heart because of some cockamamie spell from my book that she placed on it to protect it from harm. Funny story: the spell is complete rubbish. I just put it in there to give Regina a false sense of security!"

Glaring, Emma snapped, "What is wrong with you? What kind of mother are you?"

"What kind of mother are _you_? Giving your baby his best chance was _not_ your primary objective, it was alleviating yourself from a burden you didn't want to be strong enough to carry. And you never wanted your second child, you merely gave into the pressure of your insipid family and their brood-mare values."

" _That. Wasn't. Me!_ "

"It was a fully-formed being spawned from the seed of darkness in your heart that never wanted to bring life into the world because of the horrible life that world gave you. I understand, dear. The darkness in you despised your son for compounding your pain with a dream broken by betrayal. And it despised your daughter for chaining you to an emotionally suffocating and sexually manipulative man - a man whose true nature the Dark One realized, but the shell left behind after that darkness was purged felt obliged to kneel before like a common whore, showing her eternal gratitude for his part in freeing her of that _enlightenment_ by spreading her legs and birthing his spawn - as every good woman must to be happy. Or so we are told."

Cora clicked her tongue and shook her head. "Even the most selfish part of you failed to achieve true happiness and live up to your potential. Now _that_ really is pathetic."

"Why are you here?" Emma finally demanded wearily. "If annoyance is part of judging my soul-"

"Young people today, always so impatient."

"I'm not that young," Emma argued, uncomfortably. "At least... not the 'most selfish' part of me..."

"The most selfish part of you has the wisdom of life experience. _And knows how to use magic_. Don't discredit your pride entirely. One should take pride in their achievements after all, when well earned."

"Yeah, well, apparently none of mine were."

"Then it's time to change that," Cora challenged. "It's time you accomplished something to be truly proud of rather than a laundry list of failures touted as successes by your fan-fuck-boy."

"A lot of good that'll do me when I'm dead," argued Emma.

"A wise man once said that death is but the next great adventure, dear."

Frowning, Emma mused, "I'm pretty sure that was Albus Dumblefore."

"Quite. And he is wise. And a selfish, manipulative old bastard who made his fame using a child to accomplish his goals. Unfortunately, he also prefers men..."

That said, Cora vanished in a swirl of purple smoke, leaving Emma alone on the dilapidated swan boat.

"Wait... Dumbledore is real... and gay?" Emma uttered, confused.

Before she had time to think further on the possibility of a _Harry Potter_ universe, a rather loud sloshing sound drew her attention to the aft of the boat just off the port side.

Emma silently cursed Hook for informing her of nautical terminology just before the murky contents of the canal erupted in a geyser of fowl-smelling water...

* * *

 **AN:** Who best to run the Tunnel of Love than the Queen of Hearts? I had to bring back my unapologeticly evil Cora after the retcon bullshit of Season 4. You know Regina had to be into _Fifty Shades_... but why Cora was sniffing her clothes, I'm not sure I want to know! As for how Cora knows about petrii dishes and anything else that didn't exist in the Enchanted Forest and she wouldn't have learned about while plotting her manipulation of Regina and Rumple-murdering - who gives a shit, it's not like the show would! And, yes, I brought back the syphilis and Monkey Herpes, this time with a side of HPV, because, why not? The more STDs the merrier, I always say of OUAT fanfiction!

 **Next up:** Emma finds her way out of the Carnivhell sewer of lust, sadly without help from the Ninja Turtles.


	7. This Ain't Nathan's

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note #2: Apologies in advance on two fronts. I know, I know, it's annoying that I am leaving out what Emma confronted and how she defeated it. It's lazy-ass writing. I just don't have the time to fill in some gaps and I want to get the main part of the chapters done. Hopefully, if any one cares down the line, I will fit in some flashbacks, perhaps with a dream sequence or something. On the second front, sorry that this chapter evolved mainly into an excuse to feature disgusting carnival food and call Emma a 'skank' as many times I could fit it in. So... if you don't think Emma is a skank and are eating right now, maybe don't read this?**

* * *

 **CHAPTER SEVEN**

 **THIS AIN'T NATHAN'S**

Emma coughed and sputtered, brackish water pouring out of her lungs onto the dock... or boardwalk as it turned out to be when she pushed herself up.

She was back at the carnival on a strip of wood-covered planks that held food and game stalls, all of them with lights and even music, though there seemed neither vendors nor customers...

Accept for one.

She spotted a figure lounging at a table by a stall advertising caramel apples and warily approached only to stop short, startled.

"Dad?"

The man in black with a dusting of facial hair looked up and scoffed, "Well, I've probably sired some bastards in my life, but none that would address me as such. You'd be my skanky niece, I suppose."

Frowning, Emma returned, "And you'd be James. Murderer of Giants."

"And murdered by a giant of a man. Never say life - and death - doesn't have its ironies. Like yours. Both. _Very ironic_."

"What are you going to do to me?" Emma challenged, "sick a stay puft marshmallow man on me?"

"I have no idea what that is," said James, "but don't be so quick to dismiss me, skanky niece. We share blood. Just because your mother tempered my brother's flaws doesn't mean you're free of them, particularly when her line's got a shit-heap of its own. You wouldn't have swooned over a functional alcoholic slut otherwise."

He frowned a little and lamented, "Speaking of, I do miss Jack. That wench was always the perfect combination of drunk and horny. A woman of my own persuasion. Just a tad impetuous. I didn't want to leave her to die of that poison, of course, but there was nothing for it. Pity we got neither gold nor magic beans. Rather pointless death," he concluded while stroking his goatee.

"Yeah, you have my condolences," Emma muttered, then asked, "So, if Cora was Lust, who are you supposed to be?"

James looked at her smirkingly and waved an arm at the food stalls as he replied, "Gluttony, of course."

"Seriously?" snorted Emma. "You don't look like a fat slob."

"One doesn't need to be a fat slob to be a glutton," retorted the Prince. "The best gluttons are ruggedly handsome and wasteful in their overindulgence and over consumption of wealth in its many forms, however social norms might define it."

Shining his rings on the sleeve of his princely garb, James expounded, "Which, in my case, was just about everything, including my mistresses and many balls and feasts, splurging on what might have gone to the peasants if we'd actually cared much for them. But why should one care overmuch of people who are so indoctrinated into the idea of being hopelessly stuck in their fate without help of a fairy godmother? Some may call me selfish and evil, _but I got up off my fine fit ass and did things to try and change my kingdom's fate_!"

"Yeah, like King Arthur," challenged Emma.

"Well, he was delusional. But he tried."

Picking up a napkin and tucking it into the collar of his leather vest, he scoffed, "I mean, what did Cinderella do? She bartered her first born for a ball gown and then cried fowl when the Dark One collected. And _Thomas_. His father only sanctioned his marriage as an attempt to appease the peasants for the years of property mismanagement that had lead to blights and crop failures and unscrupulous tax collectors like that Bo Beep witch. And your parents started two wars that lead to the deaths of far more than a half dozen giants."

"So, what's your point? All good leaders suck?" Emma huffed.

"No, just most of them," retorted James. "It's the inbreeding. Not that the _evil_ leaders are better, of course. More cunning, generally more intelligent over-all, but it's wasted on vices. Look at Midas?"

"I thought he was a good leader," remarked Emma, confused. "I mean, he was cursed..."

"And used that curse to make a castle solid gold and fill it with the gilded carcasses of endangered magical creatures," scoffed James. "You think he wanted me to slay a dragon to impress his daughter? I didn't get a reputation as James the Dragon Slayer for nothing. He just wanted to add another trophy animal to his hunting castle. But you know what they say, if life gives you curses - use it to become an animal-killing loan shark."

Emma scoffed, "Pretty that's not an actual saying."

"Not in _your_ world," argued James. "Guy was scary, let me tell you. No one ever wanted to take out a loan from Midas. His interest rates were criminal and you never know when he'd collect by turning one of your henchman to gold. Sure, he wasn't as mad as Arthur, but you didn't want to owe Midas any debts."

James snagged a deep-fried Twikie from a pile of food that seemed to have just appeared out of nowhere while Emma wasn't looking and amended, "Aaaanyway, my point is, skanky niece, you've got a bit of glutton in you with your fancy-ass apartments, tight leather dresses, and those designer stripper heals."

"I don't wear stripper heals. Belle wears stripper heals," Emma harumphed.

"I'm sure a number of stores on Fifth Avenue would say differently. Seriously, skanky niece, who wears stripper heals to make breakfast for their son and take a walk in the park?"

"I had fake memories for a fake life - and stop calling me 'skanky niece'!"

"Fake or real, it doesn't change the core of your personality. You're skanky. You _are_ my niece. And you are also a glutton. And I don't mean the grilled cheese and onion rings - which is a _disgusting_ combination."

"You're eating a deep-fried Twinkie," Emma pointed out, "and _I_ don't like onion rings."

"Evil twin thing, huh? That's cool," grinned James.

"It is _not_ cool."

"Well, obviously not. It's a gastronomically insult. But soulless beings - there's no accounting for taste. Literally," agreed James. "Now... where was I? Oh, yes, your non-food-related overindulgence. Besides the commitment free sex with strangers and the emotion free sex with fanboys family relations, you covet pretty things - like sex-supplying fanboys. Also, there's the day drinking."

"Alcohol addiction is a disease-"

"Accepting it is the first step to recovery I've been told."

"I was going to say, _but I am not an alcoholic_. Or a jacket shop-aholic. Or a sex addict!" Emma argued. "And everyone likes to be flattered once in a while," she concluded, crossing her arms.

"Flattered, huh? Being stalked is rarely flattering," imparted James after polishing off the Twinkie. "I should know. Sexy prince that I am, I had a number of stalkers in my lifetime." He licked his fingers before continuing, "And I may be evil, but I grew up loved and well-adjusted enough to know that attention from strange woman who declared their undying love for me, insisted I was destined to be their one true love, invaded my personal property, and turned every conversation into some narcissistic revisionist history of their pathetic lives that paralleled mine were mentally and emotionally unbalanced stalkers looking to bed me, wed me, and use their feminine wiles to bend me to their whims. Of course, your pirate's only feminine wiles were eyeliner, excessive jewelry, and being emotionally smothering - but you get the point."

"Yeah, okay, I got a bit escapist obsessed with his attention to distract me from my otherwise shitty life," Emma grumbled, "but that doesn't mean I have a problem. I mean, I barely knew him before I _lost my soul_."

"Oh, skanky niece, you have _so_ many problems!" tutted James as he waved a stick of cotton candy like a fluffy sword. "When you don't want to deal with a problem, you drink. That's a problem. When you get drunk, you destroy other people's personal property. That's a problem on top of a problem. And only an alcoholic would drink the backwash of a three century old STD-riddled pirate _on a regular basis_."

"Alcohol kills germs," Emma grumbled.

"Pure alcohol kills germs. Homemade rum kills brain cells. No wonder you're so dumb," James chortled, poking her in the temple with the stick.

"I'm _not_ dumb."

"Your mother's not very bright. Neither is your father - though I think that's more our father dropping him on his head as a baby when he was drunk than any heredity stupidity like you got from your maternal grandfather. Poor Leo. His parents were first cousins."

"I'm _not_ a glutton, okay?" Emma hissed. "Just because I have a drink sometimes when I am stressed or bought a lot of jackets doesn't make me a horder. It's not like I was withholding anything from the needy like you."

"Just your dedication to their happiness in equal measure to your family, some of whom, like me, are stone-cold asshole murderers who don't deserve anything remotely like happiness," he told her with a smirking grin and a shrug while Emma scowled.

" _That counts as gluttony_ ," tutted James while pulling off wads of pink fluff. "It's _selfishness_ , essentially placing concern with one's own interests above the well-being or interests of others, and that extends to elevating your family to VIP status when you were explicitly given the task of being _everyone's_ Savior. Doesn't require _schadenfreude_ to be a dick," he said, "just ignoring that misfortune while enjoying your own sweet deal."

Emma glared while James ignored her and ate his cotton candy. When she couldn't take the silence anymore, Emma demanded, "How are you even using Land Without Magic slang? And you know about my shopping habits, but you don't know pop culture terminology?"

"I'm an enigma!" chortled James. "Also, the dead can see many worlds. But that doesn't mean we take the time to watch their movies and television shows. Furthermore, I met Isaac back in the day. He wrote me a cure for syphilis in exchange for some tips with the ladies. Seems he had an unfortunate knack for attracting serial killers and wanted to break that cycle with some new moves - and with all the syphilis going around the Enchanted Forest, he could make quite a few mutually beneficial trades."

"Right, because Jack was such a sweetheart. She probably gave you syphilis," snorted Emma with a roll of her eyes.

"She was a sweetie when she was sober... which wasn't very often, and I actually got Cupid's Disease from a pretty little bar wench who got it from your great grandfather - I think she was one of his few consensual non-pirate shags - though how consensual an alcoholic sex addict is is probably open to debate."

After licking his fingers again, James told a glowering Emma with a pointed look, "Look, skanky niece, you've been a complete and utter dickhead in many aspects of your life. I know how that goes," he told her and paused to offer her...

"Where are my manners? Beer Ravioli? Deep fried Kool-Aid ball?"

"No thanks," Emma grunted.

"Really? You seemed so into the Enchanted Forest Kool-Aid," quipped James. "I mean, you had inherent psychological issues sure. Even before the de-souling, you transferred a love-hate relationship with your Latin-y childhood frenemy who betrayed you terribly to an adult proxy who betrayed you even more terribly... and then your childhood frenemy was transformed into a giant of a white woman-"

"Yeah... I never did actually figure what was up with that," Emma conceded with a sigh.

"Magic, obviously. Merlin's apprentice is racist," said James after finishing off a Kool-Aid ball. "Although whether be was racist before he became Merlin's lackey or after is debatable. I mean, you try being a crotchety old fucker indentured to a handsome and eternally young wizard and assigned to be his proxy in the most racist part of our world - and not pick up some hate issues. The Enchanted Forest is _so_ racist. I mean, like _really really_ racist. Non-super-white people only go there if they're exiled or enslaved. Which is a shame. Do you know how hard it is to find a white mistress with an _ass_ in the Enchanted Forest? Jack was great in bed, but she could have used a bit more junk in the trunk if you know what I mean."

"You are a loathsome human being who let your lover die," grumbled Emma.

"And you're a shallow skank who pursued a man just because his ass looked hot in leather pants. Don't deny it. You liked laying on your back and being jabbed with his sword. Seriously, though, did someone touch you as a kid in the foster system, because I'm pretty sure finding rape threats at sword-point romantic is a sign of sexual abuse."

"Stop channeling Cora, you weirdo!"

"Stop denying you were molested, you skank!"

Red-faced, Emma exclaimed, "Fine, I was five, but it has nothing to do with me and Hook!"

James scoffed. "Just keep telling yourself that. Do you want to know how many of my lovely stalkers were diddled by their step-daddies?"

" _Shut up!_ "

"Of course, in your world, it's surprising you didn't end up pole dancing. Or not. You really lack coordination. I feel for your pirate kin's pointy-booted feet. Though pointy boots went out of style a good two centuries ago, so not that much."

"Is there an actual point here?" Emma growled.

"Besides getting you to admit that someone touched you in your naughty place before you started renting it out to perverts? Well, that would be that Lust and Gluttony are strange but close bedfellows," James told her. "Not literally, but I'd have laid with Cora in her younger years, let me tell you. I hear she was quite the freak between the sheets!"

"Oh. My. God. _I hate you_. Why are all you people perverts!?"

"It's the social oppression of a patriarchal society that defines a woman's worth by the state of her virtue - that being chastity until marriage."

"I suppose I should have guessed that," sighed Emma as she finally took a seat at the table to watch in disgusted fascination as James dug into a fried ice cream burger.

He finished it in three disgusting bites, then continued, "Aaaaanyway, where were we? Oh, right, Regina."

"I don't think we were."

"Yes, we were. Your childhood lesbian crush proxy."

"Lily was not-"

"Right, you kissed by accident in that boathouse. Embrace your bi-curiosity, skanky niece. The men in your life were certainly not living up to expectations," said James. "Not that you should have scissored your step grandmother. That woman was a crazy bitch. I was all for your 'you are a sociopath, I going to take you down, bitch' speech." He then rolled his eyes. "But you took one holiday to the Enchanted Forest and even after the whackjob tried to kill you and your family to help her formerly fuckable mama become immortal, you invited her for lasagna. Betrayal equals friendship is just as bad as your sex pervert addiction."

Emma scowled. "I told her she had to work to spend time with Henry, though..."

"Which quickly transitioned to 'I will jeopardize my very soul to help you make a new family with your murderer-loving fuckboy,'" he waved a hand, remarking, "kudos to Robin, really, what a bro," before continuing, "It warmed the cockles of my heart when Gi-Gi truthed you all free of Pan's clutches by saying she would murder and destroy and rape and pillage and fuck over your happiness all over again so she could change your son's diapers. But then, I love murdering raping and pillaging - and hate children. But you, skanky niece? _You've got issues_ ," concluded James with a snort.

"Shut up," Emma grumbled and took a beer ravioli off the table. Sadly, it was _delicious_.

James smirked.

"Shut up."

"Didn't say anything."

"It's cooked! There's no alcohol in it!"

"It's deep fried for like three seconds. Still boozy. You can get so wasted on these things. I try to lay off the carbs, though. Got to keep in shape for the ladies."

" _You're dead_."

"So are all of my lovers, and the well-bread ones always come back for more."

Emma made a disgusted sound and again her creepy uncle smirked.

"See, skanky niece, us royals excel at gluttony. Food, fucking, fashion, ferocious beast slaying. Anything that puts the peasants to shame will do."

James paused, then grinned, "Hey, I wonder if your parents feel bad for all the roast swan they ate over the years? And the funny thing, of course, is that swan tastes _terrible_. It's gamy and tough and full of fat, but not good fat like duck fat, rather nasty, bad-tasting fat. Still, swans are pretty, so kings and queens love having them slaughtered, dressed, and cooked inside their feathery taxidermy bodies for centuries. I'm sure there's some analogy to you in there somewhere."

Emma glared. "I can't believe I'm related to you!"

"I can't be worse than Great Grand-Pappy Killy-Poo-Put-His-Sword-in-Your-Lady-Scabbard. And by 'scabbard' I mean your vagina."

"I can't believe I'm related to _either_ of you."

"You know, shagging your own kin, that's sick even by my liberal standards," sniggered James. "but I understand how hard it is to comprehend such a physically perfect pedigree. We are both excessively hot, tall and muscular with smolder turned up to eleven that never quits while you are ridiculously short with straight dishwater blonde hair, a face full of childish freckles, and tits like a twelve year old girl. Unless you spend hours with highlights and curling irons, concealer and false lashes, and magical push-up bras that make it appear as though you've got something to show for puberty there - or use dark magic - you look like Tilda Swinton and Gollum's love child. Actually, using dark magic does that too."

"I do not look like that! And I thought you didn't watch movies!?"

James scoffed. "Gollum is quite real. Middle Earth is a real trippy place. And Tilda Swinton is an androgynous forked-tongued lizard witch whom you apparently find hideous."

"She is not! And I do not!"

"You do and she might be. You're dead and banned from television and movie privileges, so you'll never know."

After a pause to pick up... a chocolate covered scorpion? James expounded on his previous point, "You see, you are deplorably plain, just a step above homely, really. It's the eyebrows and eyes that are deceptive. You have great eyebrows from your great grand pappy and eyes that aren't quite hazel and not quite blue, both of which distract from the over-all average package until it's too late. A bit like Jack, really. It was the eyes that pulled me in before I realized she wasn't so much hot as kind of looked like a dude. I feel for Killian. He must have been _so_ disappointed with the reveal."

"Asshole!" Emma threw a spaghetti and meatball on stick at him. Which he caught. _Damn it_. "I like the way I look. I am _not_ vane."

"Your nerdy glasses say differently, nerd-hater," argued James as he took a bite of the meatball.

Emma, finding the glasses on her face, pulled them off and growled, "I had to get Lasik surgery because I was a bountyhunter! I have nothing against nerds."

"Suuuure. It's funny, really," said James, "that it's most often the people who have to primp and preen themselves to look pretty who are the most superficial of other people's looks. Speaks to some deep insecurity and self-esteem issues, I suppose. Also, keep the man-hands to yourself, young lady!"

"SHUT UP!"

"You shut up," James taunted back. "I'm the adult giving the lecture here, and you may not like to hear it, but I'm the expert on excess and debauchery and you can't even go swimming in the deep end without your floaties or you end up falling down portals, turning into the Dark One, shagging on a bed of rape roses, and spawning evil."

Emma glared. "I hate my family."

"Yes, yes, they are terrible, aren't they? Bunch of hypocritical rape-lovers. I hate them as well," James agreed. "Badly written, every last one of them. And did you see how _fat_ your mother got popping out another brat? I mean, the ass was nice, sure, but the rest of it was a turnoff. And the weird obsession with orange and ponchos. I don't know how she can retain the title of 'fairest of them all' with the fashion sense of a road construction crew worker. Plus, _that weave_. Did your father make it from a mangy goat?"

All Emma could manage was an aggravated growl that her uncle ignored.

"Maybe more of a pumpkin... Halloween must be a fun holiday," James mused off topic. "Dressing up in sweet outfits to trick old people into giving you things."

"That is _not_ how trick-or-treating works!"

"Really? And how would you know? The big kids always beat you up for your homemade costumes and took your candy before you made it down the block. The closest you got to candy was half-eaten PopTarts... which rather makes your food-related prisoner abuse hypocritical, don't you think?"

Emma harumphed and crossed her arms again. The Halloween part was true. She always got laughed at and never got any candy. Part of the reason she at first hated Enchanted Forest clothes was the feeling that she was wearing a costume and would be ridiculed. But then, as the Dark One, she didn't give a fuck if people were judging her. Sure, she picked a pretty shitty costume, but Emma strongly suspected that fashion sense required having a soul... and true memories.

She blamed the PopTart thing on her soulless demon self. _She_ would never do that. Or powder her hair and eyebrows for no reason.

James expounded, "Children are horrible. Hence the reason I never claimed any of mine. One day they're calling you 'Papa' and making cute drawings and the next they're screwing your mistress and plotting to take your thrown."

"That didn't happen."

"To me? You don't know. Or do you mean your son? He turned out to be quite the pervert, didn't he? Well, what do you expect with a man-slut for a male role model? But he got his comeuppance in the end. Or is it _cum_ -uppance? _Heh_. You're meat shadow dying for that cute little bastard that wasn't even your blood... now that's sad, isn't it?"

"Well, apparently, it's good that I'm completely dead," Emma hissed, "or my soul would still be in that past prison hell."

"Purgatory."

" _Whatever_."

"I suppose you're right, though. That existence needed to end, but better a chance the souls - sadly incomplete as they are - could be saved by you preemptively kicking it than if you'd gone out with the rest of our kin in a Dark One sized orgy of evil. As I understand it, that would have just tabla rasa'd the whole thing. Not sure even you would have existed anymore, being a storybook character like the rest of us, no matter how unique you're supposed to be."

After a pause, James mused, "Though I can't say I miss the Enchanted Forest, it's surrounding kingdoms, or the majority of the inhabitants. As I said, all the racism made for a very bland variety of ladies. And Asians. I think they only let Mulan in because she's gay, so there was less chance of her creating any half-Asian baby warrior princesses to beat the shit out of all of the dishonorable white rulers in the land. Which is most of them. We've a very corrupt and xenophobic homeland."

"Yeah, well, God apparently created it that way," stated Emma, still not sure what her feelings on God were. She'd stopped believing in a higher power at every early age, but then magic was real, so... and here she was, having talked to self-proclaimed Angels.

"Of course. No one wants to read about generous and well-functioning governments to learn how to form a generous and well-functioning government," scoffed James, pickle pop in hand. " _Thank God_. Can you imagine how boring my life would have been if not for the requisite debauchery? Sure, it was a short life, but YOLO, am I right?

"Well, not for most of our family, actually. It's rather unfair. I got stabbed through the heart once and I die forever while my brother and the rest you lot came back a half dozen times from mortal injuries that had you colder than the Snow Queen's titties. Although, to be fair, you technically died just the one time while your soulless body double slutted and murdered it up, giving you a shit-heap of extra sins upon your soul once she kicked it. Not the best parol terms, I imagine."

"Having the memories of a creepy obsessive love affair with my great grandfather and murdering people? Yeah, not really. I preferred the halfway house and work study courses."

"And I prefer food that wasn't deep fried in pig lard," sighed James. "But what are you going to do? At least I still have my looks and my fashion sense and wasn't punished with flannel and burgundy leisure suits.

"Merlin's balls, my brother had terrible fashion sense, and he couldn't remotely rock a sexy scruff beard. Mostly David just looked gay, and not in a gay-fashion-designer-making-awesome-evil-outfits way. Which, I get, is an insulting use of the term, but I am a douchebag."

"A very long-winded douchebag," grated Emma.

"Well, if I don't talk, the ladies want to talk after sex, and then I would be tempted to kill them," James explained. "So I extoll the virtues of all my non-sexual conquests. They love hearing about the many dragons I killed. I plucked many a virginity with those tales. Virgins love dragon stories."

He unwrapped another treat. "Caramel apple covered in meal worms?"

Emma grimaced. She'd actually seen these nightmarish things at the Arizona State Fair. Just to spite him, she took a bite, chewed, forced herself not to gag, and swallowed.

James smirked. "Quite good at repressing the gag reflex. Lots of practice?"

"FUCK OFF!"

"I bet you did. I wonder which of you is the bigger skank, you or Jack? Ever participated in an orgy? Banged a unicorn?"

"What kind of a freak do you think I am!?"

"One of my deviant gene pool overlapping with another sex-addicted gene pool," James told her and rolled his eyes adding, " _Duh_."

"I have not had any orgies or 'banged' any animals... well... aside from Walsh, but he was human at the time and I wouldn't have had sex with him I'd known he was a flying monkey!"

"Well, here's hoping you get off on that technicality," nodded James. "Bestiality is the only thing worse than incest. Though I'm not sure how it relates to, say, Dwarfs and Fairies. Personally, I don't see the problem with it, and the fact that the Blue Fairy made a stink about it suggests it's perfectly acceptable. The only people more racist and sexist than Enchanted Forest humans are Fairies. I mean, Cinderella got that Fairy of Color killed, and she got a husband for it. Tinkerbell tried to help the only biracial monarch in the Enchanted Forest and got exiled to Neverland. There's something shady going on with that cult of glittery bugs, let me tell you."

"Okay, you may have a point there," Emma conceded. "The fairies are creepy and suspicious."

"And never ever _ever_ put out," sighed James.

Emma groaned, "And theeeere it is."

"And here you are," countered James, "trying to act all high and mighty and virtuous. But even knowing that unnaturally pretty people tend to be ugly on the inside, what with never having to work hard for anything and being spoiled into rotten worm-covered apples," he remarked while picking up the candy apple, "you've regularly been drawn toward them."

"I had part of my soul missing!" huffed Emma.

"True, but still, it's something you should talk to a therapist about."

"What therapies!? I'm _dead_!?"

"There are therapists in the afterlife. Freud might even proscribe you some cocaine. It's better than pixie dust!"

"Arrrgghh!" Emma cried in disgust and jumped to her feet.

She was _not_ an alcoholic or sex addict or intentionally screwing over peasants or some shallow drama queen. This was such bullshit!

"You can't walk away from your enemy before it's defeated!" James called after her. "You'll just get stabbed through the back!"

Emma growled and spun back around, but James was gone.

Suddenly, the ground shook and a shadow fell over the food booths.

Craning her neck up, Emma hissed, "You've got to be kidding me!"

* * *

 **AN: What did you think of James? A lot more adolescent than on the show, but he was definitely a douchebag. Sorry again for not showing Emma fight the Tunnel of Love Monster.**

 **Next up: Another 'G'.**


	8. The Original Rape Apologist

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER EIGHT**

 **THE ORIGINAL RAPE APOLOGIST**

Emma had been covered in a variety of weird substances, but marshmallow was a new one. She would definitely never eat a s'more again, she decided as she tried to pull globs of the stuff out of her 'straight dishwater blonde' hair while navigating the destroyed section of the carnival in the still dark of night.

This place was like fucking Neverland with its never-ending night.

So focused was she on pulling a wad of puffed sugar out of her hair - and so stuck were her fingers to her hair - that Emma failed to notice an impediment in her path as well as to catch herself as the impact to her shins sent her pitching face first into an overstuffed trash can.

Tumbling over the bin, Emma landed in a smelly pile of garbage that had been the disgusting fried food repository for the day's probably nonexistent carnival-goers. Thanks to the marshmallow, a wide variety of the disgusting half-eaten "treats" stuck to her.

And the unforeseen impediment let out a laugh that if not so girlie would have reminded Emma very much of that bully kid Nelson on _The Simpsons_. But instead of a boy in ratty jean-shorts her bully was a young and prissy looking woman in a fancy white ballgown, tiara, and elbow-length gloves.

Emma glared at a strange young woman. "What the fuck, lady? Did you just trip me?"

"You're guttersnipe trash. I thought you'd be missing your home and wanted to help you get back," snidely replied the young woman.

"Seriously?" Emma spat, flicking off garbage from her person as she got up.

She'd dealt with this sort of adolescent bullshit in elementary school, but this bougee little snot was calling her trash? Okay, so Regina had pretty much called her that early on in their... whatever you wanted to call their "relationship", but strangers in fancy clothes didn't usually come up to her and insult her.

"Who do you think you are?" Emma demanded, "you uppity bitch."

The young woman turned her nose up and declared, "I am Princess Eva of the Enchanted Forest, second cousin to Prince Leopold, soon to be King Leopold after his brother's impeding abdication. And you are trespassing!"

"Trespa-"

Emma stopped herself as she realized the surroundings had entirely changed. They weren't in the food area anymore, but rather a garden. It was sort of a cheap beer garden with a fake-ass gazebo that made Granny's Camelot mash-up look professionally done. There was a mural of a castle on a wall that Emma supposed was meant to be like a movie set backdrop - at least to her _grandmother's_ delusional thinking.

"You know what? Fine," Emma told the crazy lady who was, apparently, rape-spawned by Killian Jones, "I'll just be on my wa-"

"Let you go? Trespassing is a punishable offense, peasant!"

A vulpine grin crossed Eva's face and she seemed to pounce, startling Emma up against the side of the gazebo.

"No, I shall summon the guards and you will rot in the dungeon!"

There was a chain on the wall of the gazebo which the snotty princess pulled, causing a bell to chime and she looked smugly at Emma, still covered in trash.

"This will soon _all_ be mine, you know," she boasted. "And I schemed masterfully to get it. Of course, my husband is a complete dolt and not especially attractive besides who fell in love with a _miller's daughter_ , a peasant just like you. The things one must do to secure hereditary security for their descendants!"

"Yeah, well, you know what?" Emma retorted, "I'm one of them! I'm your frigg'n granddaughter whose life got ruined because you fixated on ruining that woman's life! And you got poisoned to death and your 'dolt husband' was murdered by Cora's daughter who cast a spell that destroyed the life of your daughter and me and turned your ill-gained kingdom into an uninhabitable wasteland, you greedy bitch!"

"Quite," said a similar but more mature voice from behind.

Emma spun and an older, dressed in red velvet _Queen Eva_ was seated on a padded bench twirling a pink tea rose between her fingers.

"Wait," Emma deduced, "you're Greed? Here I was expecting... I dunno... King Arthur."

"Oh, he is quite greedy," conceded Eva, "but also was certifiably insane with his megalomania when he set about all of his horrible misdeeds. Also, you were soulless and your corporeal form possessed by a demonic force when you met him. Greed and pride feeding off of each other and strengthening your mutually psychotic ambitions and lustful manipulations. A shame what happened to Guinevere, though she was a bit of a self-centered hoe from the start..."

Frowning, Emma inquired, "You're saying that just because she got with some other guy when her husband was ignoring her she deserved to be mind-wiped and basically raped by her husband for five years? What the hell is wrong with you? I thought you matured and got a clue when you had my mom?"

"Well, you thought wrong based on Snow's delusionally perfect view of me created by my dolt husband who worried that he had traumatized the girl by not attending my funeral out of spite after, some years earlier, discovering that I had contrived Cora's downfall to get the throne for myself. Why do you think we had only the one child? Well, that and Leopold's erectile dysfunction. Probably a result of his parents being cousins."

"Wait... and you're also cousins?"

"We're royalty. We're more inbreed than Golden Retrievers, Emma. I mean, honestly, if my mother hadn't been raped by that pirate... well... let's just say if my adoptive parents had actually produced a child who then married Leopold, my daughter probably would have been born without a chin."

"So now you're trying to put a positive spin on rape as a counter-balance to greed-based inbreeding?" scoffed Emma.

"Well, you put a positive spin on it by completely ignoring that my father did it to hundreds of women for centuries because you wanted him to put his sword in your scabbard. Anyone can set aside morality for their own personal gain," said Eva. "You dragged off perverts to jail for years, but when you were attracted to one of them, you ignored every terrible thing he ever did to get him into your bed."

" _I didn't have a soul_."

"You were quite ensouled in the beginning."

"I was emotionally compromised," Emma argued, "and _then_ I didn't have a soul before I had time to reconcile any of it. _You_ got your cushy position in line to the throne and still couldn't help yourself tripping Cora so she nearly got murdered by a tyrant and to escape had to learn dark magic from Rumplestitlskin which is what set her down the path to mess up her daughter who ruined my life!"

"Yes, yes," conceded Eva and the Queen shrugged, "but how much _better_ would your life have been if _none_ of that had happened? Your parents were written as soulmates so they would have met and married somehow. Your mother would have been born regardless of how my marriage to Leopold turned out. Your father still would have assumed James' identity. You just would have grown up in the Enchanted Forest and been married off to some vain prince with a bouffant... a marriage you probably would have fled to unknowingly get pregnant by the Dark One's son and then leave him for the slutty pirate you did not know was your kin. And Zelena is just a psychopath, so raised by a well-adjusted Cora or not, she would have still attempted her little temporal rewrite and you, being an air-headed little princess whose only knowledge of the world was a peasant boy from Neverland and pirate's cock between your legs would have still fucked it all up right and proper."

Eva clicked her tongue. "So don't go blaming your misfortune on me, missy. You saw how _I_ turned out. With the same gene pool and royal upbringing you actually think you would have turned out _better_ than you did as an impoverished orphan?"

Letting out a grunt, Emma allowed, "Okay, fine, maybe not. All you royals seem to be idiots and assholes."

"Yes, exactly. It's a trope."

"That I was supposed to break," sighed Emma, sinking onto the bench and picking up Eva's discarded tea rose. She began plucking the petals, recalling distastefully how she'd kept that fuck flower. _Stupid soulless Emma_. "Yeah, yeah I heard that already."

"But have you really listened?" Eva scolded. "Have you accepted all of your sins? Are you repentant? You judge me for my crimes that hurt my bloodline, but you place all the blame for your own faults upon this unintended creation - one _spawned from your unclean soul_."

Shaking her head, the Queen expounded, "I seem to recall you denigrating your first love in front of your child, did you not? You flirted with and extalled the virtues of _my_ father in the very last moments you might have shared with your family. Such _loyalty_. And you blame that on too much happening too quickly? Hardly. Your uncle is right. You _adored_ the attention, being seen as the princess you know you aren't really, even if you have the right by blood. I let a rapist go free, yes, and you took one into your bed and let him mind your son. You told him that all of his sins were forgiven, absoled by the wonder of his love for you."

" _That wasn't me_!"

"It was _part_ of you," stated Eva harshly. "You have to accept the good with the bad, Emma. My daughter could never do that. She could never see me as anything but perfect. And could never stand to see herself as anything but perfect, going to great lengths to excuse away all of her atrocious behavior from the time she was a small child. I tried to impress upon her the virtues a princess should have, but she took everything to absurd extremes. I did love my little Snow, but God, she was bratty child. Mostly the fault of her father spoiling her, quite honestly, and he only worsened the treatment after my demise, playing right into her hereditary failings."

Eva shook her head as she pulled back. "Truly, I'd hoped Snow would use that candle. I was at least trying to right some of my wrongs, and there were numerous murderers and fools she could have traded my life for. She always did confuse being self-righteous with being righteous. And selfish.

"If Regina's curse was cast out of wrath, Snow White's was cast through greed. Perhaps not the pursuit of material possessions, but to outwit fate, to think herself somehow more deserving than others. _Special_. Theft and robbery, she might have been unable to avoid while wanted for treason, but that she repeately excused away her use of violence, trickery, and manipulation of authority on the grounds that being Snow White made her immune from darkness, is all inspired by Greed."

Eva sighed sadly, lamenting, "She was given the choice, the opportunity to live a simple life and put an end to a war. She could have used that to inspire the peasants to unite against Regina, to put away with the monarchy altogether. But deny it as she might, my daughter loved the attention, the authority, the paegentry. She _loved_ being a princess and a queen and a simple life would never satisfy her. Hence her attraction to a peasant who dreamed of escaping and quickly forgot that life as though he'd been born with a silver spoon up his backside."

Looking at Emma sourly, her grandmother declared, "And you, Emma, are greedy. Greedy for material things. Greedy for attention. Greedy for anything that makes you feel special. I suppose because you know deep down you aren't deserving of being special. And in that, we are alike. And it is that which we must fight against to find the better angels of our nature, to make the world more and better than what we were born into. I failed at that."

"So did I," Emma croaked out, hating to admit it, but Eva was right.

"Yes, you did."

Eva let out a sigh, lamenting, "A rather tragic legacy I have left," as she picked up a carraff of wine from a small table - because royals always had wine within reach - and poured it into a pair of chalices.

"Plus, you made-out with my father. Souls-aside, you were physically intimate with him and birthed my great grandchild-slash-sister."

"You _had_ to remind me," grimaced Emma. Just thinking about it... it felt like someone had stolen and defiled her body while she was temporarily misplaced outside of it.

"Hence the wine to dull the self-loathing," quipped the Queen. "And yes, I did. I chose the easiest lover to get what I wanted, as did you. It lead to my death, as it did with you. If love is easy, then it isn't love, it's lust - and greed, desire for everything but love that it provides. Rejecting that darkened your heart, made you susceptible to Zelena's tricks, allowed your pride to get in the way and end your life before you'd accomplished all that you were meant to.

"Again, we're not so different you and I, and for that I am sorry, Emma. I'm sorry that you carried the burden of my flaws and that my daughter had not the insight or empathy to help you fight them."

"You didn't have anyone either."

"True. A vicious cycle in this family on all sides of generations passing down their darkness and parents unable to help their children be free of it. A cycle you were meant to break."

"But I didn't."

"No, you didn't."

Emma took a swallow of her wine before inquiring with a mix of trepidation and resignation, "What happens now?"

"Nothing pleasant, I'm afraid," said Eva with an apologetic look -

Just as Emma realized everything was starting to get fuzzy. Her brows furrowed and she blinked owlishly at her grandmother.

"Dijoo... druhhh... meh?"

"What can I say," the blurry Queen responded with a smirking smile, "you were right. I _am_ a bitch."

* * *

 **Reviewer Shout-out** : Thank you to **Mir** for the kind review. I'm with you 100%. I can't stand it when "fans" confuse David with James and my particular pet-peeve is the lack of originality in naming Henry in AU stories. I only ever read ONE story that came up with a plausible reason for Emma to name her son Henry. It just detracts from otherwise good stories when writers don't give the audience credit enough to stick with their work/comprehend what's going on if they rename a character. I mean, sure, a great majority of the OUAT audience must have IQ's on par with Robin Hood, but they're not reading Swanfire!

 **AN** : So... yay or nay on Queen Eva? I never liked her, tbh, even when she was portrayed as saintly in her death episode. I mean, come on, she waited until her daughter was, what, ten, to tell her not to belittled the help and then gave her a major inferiority/perfection complex with her dying words that lead to Snow letting a murderer run free and the ruination of her granddaughter's life by proxy. Between letting a serial rapist run free, the peasant tripping, and being a shitty mother, Queen Eva was one self-centered, amoral royal. Also, the bitch must have been pretty vain to lay ill on her death bed in a fancy red velvet corset dress. Besides, if Leopold wanted nothing to do with her when she was dying, she couldn't have reformed _that_ much from her youthful scheming hoe ways.

 **Next up** : Bad, graphic shit goes down that is neither brushed off as irrelevant nor portrayed as rakishly romantic and any CS trolls will surely be morally offended... not that they have morals.


	9. On Your Back

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Warning: Rape herein.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER NINE**

 **ON YOUR BACK**

 **(an interlude in getting a clue)**

Emma came to laying on her back amidst the royal garden's roses bushes with a stranger looming above her.

"I've had many a kitchen maid who's nicked a bit of the royal wine," the man said, unbuckling his breeches. "And I bet you taste just as _sweet_."

"Not really," hissed Emma, kneeing him in the nuts.

As the gardener gasped, she squirmed to flee, struggling to her feet and cursing her clothes which had now become one of the white medieval Madonna-esque monstrosities fashionable in Camelot. The corset was murder and she tripped and stumbled while the cape caught on the thorny bushes, impeding her progress and allowing her capture.

But when she was spun to face the man she had realized was Zelena's father, instead it was Hook who had her literally hooked by the fabric of her cloak.

And this was not Killian with "romantic" desire in his eyes, but a dangerous pirate with the lusty madness of the man from that seaside tavern in his leer. Of course, to be fair, he was _always_ that man she now realized, and the violence had simply been curbed by her capitulation to his advances. After all, the moment her Dark-One-possessed self had turned the tables as the sexually aggressive and personal-space-invading-without-consent party, he'd wanted nothing to do with her; he'd said he didn't love the Dark One... yet six weeks earlier he'd been more than happy to fuck the Dark One's brains out when she was emotionally traumatized and insecure and he nagged and dragged her off to some meadow to not deal with her very real problems by indulging in sex.

Well, not _her_... but kind of her.

Emma's head hurt, still trying to reconcile the parts of her like the mental clusterfuck that followed the breaking of Regina's fake-life-memories spell.

And Hook's head was going to hurt if he didn't let her go.

She didn't know if his presence meant that universe had ended and her sometime lover was dead or if he was an apparition. It didn't matter.

She slammed the heal of her pointy boot into his kneecap.

The pirate hissed and Emma found herself tripped _again_ , this time landing not in a pile of garbage but a field of tea roses that couldn't logically grow that way, something her distracted self didn't seem to have considered at the time she was banging a dirty pirate atop them.

Emma grabbed one of the thorny stems and tried to swipe at her captor as he pounced atop her. Hook pinned her wrist into the dirt with his hook and smirked.

"Uh-uh-uh, luv. None of that."

"Get off," Emma demanded, struggling.

"You like it rough, do you, luv?"

"No, I want you to get the hell off of me!"

"You know what they say about a woman who says 'no'. She just needs a little more persuading. And I'm _very_ persuasive!"

"Only perverts and rapists say that!" hissed Emma.

"Now, now, you bought me drinks, you kissed me, and now you think you can just leave? You don't know pirates very well."

Oh, but she did. And he had a sword at his hip, one that Emma expertly drew. She never got it to his throat, though. His hook caught the blade before she could make any real attack, and suddenly his fist had made contact with her face causing her head to slam back to the ground, eyes seeing stars.

"You're quite feisty, luv," he chuffed, "but there are other pursuits I prefer with a woman on her back. And when I jab you with my sword _you'll feel it_."

"And you'll feel my boot up your ass!" Emma growled.

"Not really in a position to make threats."

And she wasn't. The tea rose stems had begun coiling into vines around her wrists and ankles.

Hook grinned and began unbuckling his belt. "Now, if you pay your debt by fulfilling your promise, I'll let you walk free... assuming you can walk of course."

Emma spat blood in his face as she continued to struggle futilely. "Go to hell, you asshole!"

"I'm already there, luv," he chuckled darkly. "What about you?"

And then Emma's horribly scratchy fairy tale undergarments were removed with a few quick slashes of a grappling hook and instead of feeling relieved and wet and lusty as hell to consummate years... months... a couple of weeks? of sexual tension with her obsessive stalker former date rapist boyfriend, Emma felt her panic rising in equal measure to... well... okay maybe more than equal measure to Hook's manhood since he was not as well-endowed as he liked to think. But she was still freaking the fuck out.

 _This is not real_ , Emma attempted to tell herself and maybe that was what all of Hook's victims had told themselves in their boozy hazes as he had his way with them.

Emma felt his chains heavy and cold upon her bosom, his fowl rum breath infiltrating her nostrils as the pain came, causing her breath to hitch.

She refused to scream, tasting more blood where she bit down on her tongue.

The "Dark Swan" had loved it rough and whatever she was afterward (and before), soulless and driven by lust, had eagerly made consummation into some kind of battle, more love-fucking than lovemaking, a competition for dominance that left bruises and hook-related scratches - easily healed by magic.

There was no magic here that Emma had any access to.

She thought again of the nameless women in the mirrors and of her great grandmother. She thought about the twisted, thorny bramble, the poisonous vine that was her family tree, part of it written to be so disgusting and the other part a vicious cycle of depravity out of which each generation tried by failed to escape.

Emma was supposed to be the one to the pick the lock on their imprisonment, to set those tumblers in motion and break these cliché and horrible characters free from the tropes they were trapped in and allow them to enter the _real world_ and become _real people_ with _real free will_ and _real accountability_.

When the pain faded to a numb sensation, when the fetid weight upon her let up and Emma opened her eyes, she found she was no longer in that field in Camelot but in the captain's quarters of the _Jolly Roger_ , naked in the tangled sheets that were scattered with pink petals... remnants of a wedding night she'd only been part of in some carbon copy physical form, though she now carried the memories of it... of that "passionate" night with... her great grandfather.

Emma vomited up her carnival eats on the floor, and of course in this place the meal worms now wriggled in the vomit, turning her stomach even more.

"Too much rum last night?" a snarky voice inquired.

* * *

 **AN** : Yeah, so... that was kind of messed up. But since rape is all the rage on OUAT, it just seemed wrong not to feature it... and then promptly gloss over it and move on to other trivial bullshit.

 **Next up** : Other trivial bullshit... and Hangovertinis.


	10. The Unreliable Narrator's Sex Vacation

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TEN**

 **THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR'S SEX VACATION  
**

Emma nearly fell off the bed as she whipped her head around to find August W. Booth lounging on a bay window seat.

He raised a brow and quipped, "You've certainly matured since I gave you a bath as a baby."

Cheeks turning pink, Emma quickly gathered a sheet around her and glared. She'd always suspected August was a pervert who wanted in her pants, but apparently she'd dubbed his re-adult-ized self her BFF in theory to mollify Hook's jealousy so he would stop monopolizing her time with his faux insecurity over every man she so much as smiled at.

"What the hell are _you_ doing _here_?"

"Getting a free ride to a tropical island filled with nubile prostitutes, cheap alcohol, and a wide variety of gambling opportunities," replied August, gesturing to the window.

Outside was a white sand beach with palm trees.

Emma glowered. "Phuket. You used my money to finance a tropical sex vacation _for ten years!_ "

"Twelve, technically," August corrected, standing up. "Now, do you want to lounge around in this rum-soaked rape den or enjoy the sun and surf of one of the most popular sex vacation resorts in the Land Without Magic?"

"Is there a third option?"

"Nope!"

August grabbed her stained sheet, spinning her, and when Emma came to a dizzy stop, she was at a beach resort bar and dressed in a skimpy red bikini.

"Two Hangovertinis," August told the bar tender.

"I'm giving up drinking," Emma protested.

"That doesn't sound like you."

"Turns out my paternal grandfather was a raging alcoholic. And my... ah..."

"STD-riddled great grandfather was slightly more functional in his alcoholism?"

"You're one to talk about STDs. You spent a decade banging prostitutes."

"Yeah, but I'm not a real boy," August retorted. "My wood's immune to human infections. On the downside, I'm sterile."

"That's a downside?"

"Well, if you'd gotten _your_ tubes tied, we wouldn't be here now, would we?"

"Shuddup, Puppet," Emma hissed.

August smirked at her and told the bar tender, "She'll have an Exile."

His smirk deepened at Emma's unamused look and he shrugged, "What? You are. Heard your soul was locked up here in Purgatory for awhile. That really sucks."

Emma harrumphed and crossed her arms before retorting, "What do you care, anyway? You never cared about me and I only pretended to care about you to appease my jealous asshole boyfriend since I knew you'd just disappear again for months or years, _oh best friend mine_."

"Now that's a cheap shot," huffed August. "I tried to help you. I came back."

"You died before you could provide any useful information, so Neal got shot which lead to a chain of events that resulted in his death while you got turned back into an adult-sized manwhore to continue your sick fetish lifestyle and writing shitty mystery novels. _And you never paid me back that twenty grand, you cheapskate!"_

"I didn't see the point," argued August after taking a sip of his drink. "Your parents are monarchs. You married a pirate with a ship full of gold doubloons..."

"It's the fucking principle, you asshat!"

"Yes, well, see, I was made without those," sighed August as though speaking to a small child. " _Puppet_ remember? You can't hold me to the same standards as, you know, _real people_." He made air quotes. "Or even quasi-real people from our world. That was Neal's mistake. If you humans of fairy tale persuasion are stuck in a story you can't get out of, I'm stuck on a single page. I can't emotionally mature or learn from my mistakes. All I can do is get colored contacts and dye my hair since the ladies aren't really into gingers."

"Gaaaaaaaaaa, is every man in my life a misogynist douchebag?"

"Pretty much, though most of them have souls to get damned for it and lack of hereditary predisposition to psychopathy that's a sort of exemption from going straight to Hell," said August. "We seem to suffer from a literary predisposition to chauvinism, if we're being honest here."

" _You_ honest?"

"It happens sometimes if I'm drunk enough," he confirmed with a grimace as though it was very distasteful to consider such a weakness. "Anyway, I'd say our world is made up of chauvinists like your father, Philip, Thomas, etc. - the princely sorts. And misogynists like... well... most everyone else with a Y chromosome. The women, they're either bad feminists or crazies... hence the lack of female empowerment that doesn't involve vaginal tyranny and mass genocide... which really just reinforces the cultural belief that powerful women are crazy evil bitches, so they should be oppressed in corsets and preoccupied popping out babies until they tragically perish and can be replaced with an evil stepmother."

"Sounds about right," sighed Emma.

"And what did you do about it?" challenged August. "Jack shit is what. You were too busy messing with magical bullshit and villains of the week to look at the bigger picture, the _real_ evil that had infiltrated our world. It wasn't the Dark One, it was the very premise upon which the thing was written."

"Hey, Henry was the Author," Emma reminded. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Perhaps actually parent the kid?" August accused. "But you were too busy in your Lady Gaga Halloween costume crushing hearts to bother. Your fuckboy took a more invested interest in Henry's love life... although that's probably because of his sexual deviancy. But were you around to notice that he kept making inappropriate comments in the manner of encouraging your twelve year old son to have sex with a twelve year old girl he just met? No, again, too busy playing crush the coronary artery. And do I need to bring up what you did to cast that Dark Curse in the first place? That was such fucked up shit right there, and trying to out-wit the price by taking a page from your parents' heart-splitting book - like that never had any horrible consequences!"

"That wasn't me!" Emma growled. "And even that was mostly the fault of my family that forced my hand to taking extreme action and even that asshole part of me possessed by immortal evil felt shitty about it, okay!?"

"Yeah, but still..."

"Don't you get judgey on me, Pinocchio! _N_ _one_ of that would have happened if you hadn't harassed me into freaking the fuck out and kidnapping Henry which put me in a position that just lead to endless fucking fiascoes, all because you were afraid of turning back into fire wood. Maybe the world wouldn't have ended like it did - or at all - if you hadn't been a selfish prick who pretended to befriend my son and acted like you wanted to bang me-"

"I did want to bang you-"

"Until," Emma glared, "you ran out of time on that long con and just _freaked me the fuck out_. If you were remotely heroic, _Pinocchio_ , you'd have let yourself turn to wood, I wouldn't have freaked out and kidnapped Henry, Regina wouldn't have tried to poison me and put Henry in that coma, I wouldn't have gotten sucked into that portal, and yadda yadda yadda, _I wouldn't have lost my soul in a time travel shitstorm_!"

"Again, _puppet_ ," sighed August, taking a drink.

"And why the hell," Emma continued, "did you even decide to look for me after I ran away from Ingrid's place if it was just to screw me over? How did you even find me?"

"Yeeeeeeaaaaah," winced August, "about that. I wasn't actually going to look for you, but I owed some people some money and one thing led to another... and I'm pretty sure they were working for Pan and wanted to steal your unborn baby, but then Regina got him first. Oops?"

" _You knew I was pregnant_?" Emma seethed.

"A fortune teller might have mentioned it."

"Who, Madam Mim?"

"Maybe?"

Emma threw her drink in his face.

"Hey! What the hell?"

"You knew I was pregnant and you still made Neal leave me so I'd give up my baby that, what, would just end up wherever and I'd never see again when I was reunited with my parents because kids born in the real world didn't matter to your asshole plan?"

"The Blue Fairy's asshole plan, you mean," corrected August as he strolled from the tiki style bar to a row of chaise lounges along the shore where he used a convenient beach towel to dry his face. "She's the one who could have placed Geppetto with a new family but instead had him raised by a cricket man with the worst role models for parenting since Pan whose parents had, in point of fact, killed Geppetto's parents while Jiminy was trying to kill _them_ instead - which he never did tell Geppetto. _Man_ that won't go over well in the afterlife, let me tell you!"

August flopped onto a chair and shook his head. "Anyway, come on, Emma, you can't put it all on me. Geppetto grew up to be a werido incapable of forming human relationships or getting an erection so he _cut down an extremely endangered magical tree that later could have been used to save your whole family_ and instead made me, and the Blue Fairy was shady cool with that and went behind your 'rents back when my pop blackmailed her, but I'm pretty sure she A) knew you'd be born early, B) knew your parents were too dumb to consider you'd die if you went through the wardrobe alone, and C) wanted you alive but abandoned and miserable so you'd be impressionable to however she and possibly that douche Merlin saw fit to mold you into a 'savior', whether that was fighting for justice in a weird small town in Maine or not giving a fuck about justice in a magical small town in Maine and other parts magical - because, you know, the literally layout of the tragic hero's journey is our Bible."

"So I should be praying to Joseph Campbell then?" snorted Emma, taking a reluctant seat on the adjacent lounge.

"No, but you could probably get his autograph if you end up in the same place."

"And which place is that?"

"You're the type of girl who flips to the last page of a book, aren't you?" August quipped. "Look, don't take this as fact, but if you ask me, the Blue Fairy is just as evil as the Dark One in her own way and this end of existence thing is all part of some plot of hers. She might be an agent of the Underworld."

"What, she works for Hades?" Emma asked, brows furrowed and August rolled his unnaturally blue eyes.

"No, you dummy, not the mythological dude who teabagged your great grand sugar daddy. Lucifer, Former Angel of Death, Prince of Eternal Darkness who made up the River Styx in Serendipitiy's Heavenly Fanfiction Contest of... I dunno... ten thousand years ago, let's say. He was quite the aspiring author and got pissed off that only God could create things, you see..."

"You're saying Lucifer went to war with God over copyright laws?" snorted Emma. "Okay, now I know you are bullshitting me, August. Frankly, I think between seventy and a hundred percent of what comes of your mouth is pure bullshit. And even if there was some truth in that, I don't want any more useless exposition on magical history. I got enough of that shit in actual life so death should at least be a blissful escape from that."

"Literary characters do tend to be overly expository," agreed August.

"Some more than others," she grumbled.

"I head that."

"You were supposed to."

August gave her a sour look. "Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

"I was raped, you jackass!" she seethed and he shrugged.

"No, technically he's your husband even if he's also your kin and in our world marital raping goes on all the time. I mean, if Leopold didn't have erectile dysfunction, he'd have been all over his hot little second wife before she learned magic enough to make that performance issue permanent. And did anyone care that Arthur's use of emotionally manipulative magic on his wife resulted in her being raped for five years because she obviously was not into him and wanted to be boinking Lancelot, which was the whole reason he ruffeed her? Nope. Our people got weirdly obsessed with the whole memory loss thing but never dug into the deeper consequences of loss of free will that comes from the manipulation or erasure of thoughts and feelings. I mean, look what your parents did to you before you were even born? We're shallow and lazy and douchey like that."

"Some shallower and lazier and doucheyer than others," scoffed Emma.

"I know, you're parents are pretty awful."

"I was talking about you, you tool!"

"And I was choosing to ignore that, because I was carved into a douche from a magical douche tree and they were only written to be marginally gullible and self-centered but ended up using their smidgen of free will to put themselves before their children and share a tainted heart which, as something mortals are not meant to ever do no matter how pure the thing is, turned them into egotistical dolts. So, continuing that train of thought..."

" _That wasn't me_."

"Yeah, yeah, you didn't do it. You were never responsible for anything. Now you sound like me. Welcome to the 'take no responsibility club for slackers'. Cheers!" He took another gulp of his drink.

Emma scoffed. "I get it, you're _Sloth_."

"Damn straight I am!" August proudly confirmed as he stretched out on his chair. "I never do anything unless it comes handed to me on a platter or is a literal life or my death situation, and even then... it's fifty-fifty."

"Ugh. You're awful!"

"Made that way. What can I say? It's _ingrained_ in me to be physically and spiritually lazy as fuck... often by fucking whores when I should be tending to other pertinent obligations!"

August shrugged. "But, really, when you think about it, if the Blue Fairy is possibly evil, is rejecting her grace really a _bad_ thing?"

"You didn't reject her grace, you totally accepted it and then stole Henry's lunch money!"

"Okay, but the second time, I literally manned up and stayed a man when she offered to give me another chance."

"Only because you wanted to have sex with Tinkerbell!"

"Okay, but the third time-"

"AUGUST!"

He rolled his eyes. "Chill, totally fake BFF. Look, I'm here to spout literally trope wisdom, and the definition of my character flaw is a failure to do things that one should do best described by Edmund Burke who said, 'Evil exists when good men fail to act. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavors are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.'"

After grabbing a Sex on the Beach off a passing tray, August expounded, "Vain-glory, that's your dark passenger. And I don't mean vanity. That's the repurposed modern bullshit definition. I mean _pride_. It got ego-stroked by the consequence of your sloth. Instead of associating with good men, you cavorted with villains, and now you're an unpitied sacrifice in the contemptible struggle that was the fight to un-fuck-up our destiny. So, good job, Emma."

"Fuck you, August," she retorted.

"Well, if you insist..."

Emma glared harder. "Stop channeling Hook."

"All right, but I was just going for what turns you on."

"I'm going to find a wood-chipper and throw you in it!"

"I'd like to see you try without magic. You're not even five foot five! How did you ever manage to even kiss that sea slut without carrying around an apple box to stand on every time you two got horny? I mean, Henry was taller than you when he was _twelve_."

"If I wanted to sit around being insulted by a douchebag, I'd go find my uncle again," Emma grated.

August smirked. "Fair enough. I'm getting off topic anyway. We should further address your slothfulness."

" _Seriously?_ You really think I hung out with jerks because I was lazy? I worked my butt off my whole life, even when I was stealing to survive and I sure as shit did when I was the Savior!"

"Oh, sure, you worked your _physical_ butt off, but your _emotional butt_? She's been on disability since two thousand and one."

Emma harumphed and August tutted.

"Hey, I said I was spiritually lazy? You're emotionally lazy, Emma. Your gift was your heart, your ability to love, with or without that shifty extra mojo your parents dumped on you without a warranty. But you kept it closed up for so long that when you tried letting it out, you didn't even know how to love right anymore and you were afraid of trying, afraid that it would be hard and messy. Which love is. It's _Wuthering Heights_ and _Anna Karenina_ hard, not that _Twilight Fifty Shades_ bullshit."

"I know," Emma sighed. "I just..."

"Was afraid. And the consequence of the failure to utilize your gifts was an all-paid holiday in Purgatory. Did you know medieval monks thought the punishment for Sloth was running continuously at top speed? Rather ironic."

"Ironic?"

August nodded, "Dante described acedia as the failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul - as an absence or insufficiency of love. You didn't love enough, Emma. You didn't love yourself enough and you didn't let yourself love others - or let them love you enough. You contrived all sorts of facsimiles of love in your denial, and you used your physical constant running at top speed through every crazy fiasco in life as a justification for not dealing with your feelings."

August rattled his ice cubes, amending, "At least I own my slackerhood. You've been denying it for years. What your mother said in Neverland was right: you have to deal with the pain. Love is pain."

Suddenly, with those words the sun began to set with unnatural swiftness and a strange wind picked up the fine grains of sand and caused the bartender to close up his hut.

When Emma turned her attention back toward August's chair, he was no longer in it. Another had taken his place and gave her a feline grin.

"Emma, still trying to find yourself, I see?"

* * *

 **AN** : August is a douche. I don't know why people like him. I don't know why _Emma_ likes him when he ruined her life twice and never apologized. Stupid fucking senseless man-pain loving writers!

 **Next up** : Save the Savior, save the world?


	11. Finding Neverland

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER ELEVEN**

 **FINDING NEVERLAND**

Of course it was Pan.

Emma let out a frustrated sigh. It felt a bit like she'd already been through this mess with the whole Hades/Underworld thing, though from what her illegitimate doppelgänger had meddled in, that was far more of a farce than this, more of the usual Storybrooke cliché running around and screaming as the town destroyed itself in some Greek God repo scam for the whole thing with Excalibur and Hook's "soul" or whatever amounted to one in a knockoff universe.

Or maybe everyone but her had a soul?

She still wasn't clear on that, not that it really mattered as she was now dead and _solely_ a soul... with some sinful baggage weighing it down.

"Just tell me what vice you're supposed to be so we can get this over with," sighed Emma, refusing to be as creeped out by Pan's predatory grin as she'd been in life.

The faux youth stood from the lounge and told her while brushing off grains of Neverland sand, "Wrath of course. Who else would I be? Sure, I've got fair amounts of pride, greed, and sloth, but I've always been defined by my inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger toward my bloodline."

Frowning, Emma responded, "Yeah... that's kind of fucked up. I thought men of your... er... era were supposed to be obsessed with having heirs and all that. Also, fuck you for kidnapping my son and taking his heart and trapping him in a box and forcing us to run away to New York with fake memories which have really screwed me up emotionally - apparently. Also, the whole keeping Neal prisoner for centuries out of spite for his father... or to sire my son... or whatever. You're a psycho little shit."

"You sound just like mummy," Pan sniggered, then with a shrug continued, "It's certainly not the most beneficial of vices, I will admit. The self-destructiveness, violence, and hate... mostly it just feeds upon itself like an oroborous. But at least I wasn't a king in the Enchanted Forest using some immortality magic, feeding blood feuds and whatnot for centuries like some of those royal tossers."

"I'm guessing I don't want to know what was done to you as a kid that you turned out to hate children... while wanting to be a child forever," snorted Emma. "That's a worse complex than my inferiority complex about my superiority complex..." She frowned. "Or is it superiority complex about-"

"Boooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrring," Pan cut her and with a snap of his fingers they were standing in the middle of the jungle and Emma was dressed in her Neverland tanktop with Baelfire's sword against her back.

"And, no," said Pan, "I won't bore you with that story. I'm not like all the other villains in our sordid little anthology who need all their present sins washed away by placing blame for their debauchery on some past slight. Having bad parents doesn't make one a deranged murderer... though it certainly helps when recruiting. I'd say if your son hadn't been gifted with such a magically obstinate heart, he'd have been easily brainwashed like the rest of my Lost Boys."

"You're sick."

"And you're no better than all of those foster parents and social workers you see in your nightmares," retorted Pan while picking at a hangnail. "After a year being servants in Regina's castle, they were back on the streets of Storybrooke. Did you care? No. You were too busy chasing snow monsters and making out with Killy-Poo, your _twu wuv_ \- and showing your love and self-destructive, codependent abandonment issues by turning a man destined for death into the Dark One... an act even more buggered than Rumple merging with his son, who at least _deserved_ life. Like those orphaned boys who ended up doing meth in Robin Hood's forest hobo camp. So kudos for saving them from the hellish prison of Neverland to shitting in the woods of Maine and rotting their teeth out in the hell-on-Earth of Stroybrooke you raised just so you could settle down in a drab house with a home wrecker."

"I'm _sorry_ ," Emma snapped, "if I was too busy trying to hunt down a murderous kidnapping witch who wanted to kill my unborn brother and rewrite history to have time for your kidnapped orphans. But everything after I fell down that time portal - t _hat wasn't me_."

"Part. Of. You," Pan stated bluntly. "How many of us have to bang your head against that tree, _Emma_? Nature, nurture, or magical inutero meddling, you turned out a bit messed up, a bit selfish, a bit... what did your uncle call it? _Skanky_."

Pan's lips twisted. "And _wrathful_ of course."

"I am not wrathful!"

"Really? Did your anger toward Neal for leaving you not persist long after he was dead?"

Emma grimaced and crossed her arms. "I was angry that he died and left me again, not... not still about that."

" _Liar_!" snapped the not-boy. "You don't wish a man dead if you don't have wrath in your heart. You don't 'grieve' his passing by giving your heart to his enemy, to the man who destroyed his family and imprisoned him in a hell you saw for yourself, unless there is pure unadulterated _hate_ in your heart."

Pan concluded by waving a hand and parting the undergrowth to reveal Baelfire's cave and Emma swallowed thickly.

"You saw his prison cell, the one he occupied _as a child_ for _centuries_ ," Pan accused, "and yet you could not forgive him for the eleven months you spent in jail."

Eyes flashing, Emma retorted, "Because he _knew_ what it was like and it meant I had to give up _our child_."

"Yet that was all your puppet friend, wasn't it? Baelfire didn't know he would call the cops on you. He didn't know you were pregnant. He didn't know Dildoccio would take that money. You knew all of that, and yet you called him your dear friend while dishonoring your former lover who was as much a victim of his lies and circumstances as you were. You crushed all of your love for Neal while throwing yourself into self-destructive behavior, from magical abuse to suicidal acts of so-called heroism. And did not try to save him. You did not have the pure love in your heart to save him - while you used darkness to save others. _That_ is wrath, girl.

"Your actions may not always have been associated with selfishness or self-interest, but they were no less wrathful," Pan told her. "You let that love become hate. You let it fuel you in defense of your other loved ones. You let it blind you to those who truly loved you, made you obsess over the one who deserved your affection the least to the point that you endangered your family, _your child_ that you promised Neal you would protect, ensure he did not grow up as he did - _child of the Dark One with no parents._ Sure, your boy technically had parents, but were you ever there? You were too busy making every waking moment about your fuck buddy, which is even more than your parents' sick codependent obsession with each other that kept endangering you and your brother.

"You were once an honorable person, Emma," said Pan, "but your love of justice was perverted by revenge and spite and _lust_ just as theirs was by arrogance and perfection and a delusion that kindness trickles down to the peasant masses and serves as armor against the enemies who would slaughter them in their beds."

Brow quirked, Pan queried, "How many died because of your selfish, foolish actions? From that moment in the barn and everything the apathetic freak you spawned from your broken soul did for her own desires? How many corpses did you put in the ground before it all came undone and you have the fate of an entire universe, innocents damned, to shackle your soul to this place - or some place worse?"

Shaking his head, the demon 'child' amended, "If you think some Greek interpretation of Hell manifested in the mortal world is any comparison to _real_ Hell, to the place God created for smiting actual sinners rather than entertaining people in togas into a gradual progression toward monotheism through allegorical tales juxtaposing Good and Evil, then you're one dumb twat. And sure as shite no Penelope. Not that your kid was much of a Telemachus, what with helping your creepy new beau buy you a shagpad instead of defending his father's honor and having faith that he would return. But then, why would he have faith when you had no time to even tell him about his father and acted like poor Baelfire was just a sperm donor?

"Well, that and it seems the laddy got a double dose of the arsehole gene. Pity that didn't kick in until after I was dead."

"My son isn't an asshole!" Emma snapped. "He's the best part of me, the only good thing-"

"It doesn't take much to be the best part of a amoral whore, girl," Pan interrupted, getting uncomfortably close. "That's what you are. It's what you've always been. You can't take the potential for darkness out of someone and not have them turn out wrong. You were born _wrong_ , Emma. That's why only perverts and murderers love you. That's why Neal left you. And why you can't see him. He doesn't _want_ to see you, the heartless, soul-sucking bitch who let him die, who left him to rot because she couldn't find love enough in her heart for one good man, the father of her child, before proceeding to shower love and fuck flower petals on every deviant she met like a hippy guru. And you know what they are? Frauds. Frauds who delude themselves into thinking lying and manipulating others is saving their souls and setting them on the path to a happy ending when it's really all about getting what they want, making them feel powerful as benevolent dictators and turning innocent and gullible fools into brainwashed prisoners."

He grinned. " _You're just like me_."

"I'm nothing like you!" Emma shouted.

"Yes you are," laughed Pan. "All of that anger you built up as a child, you never let that go. You just re-channeled it into an internal hatred, a self-loathing that you couldn't face. It made you strong. But it made you a stone-cold bitch that only an asshole could love. You rejected a second chance at true happiness, let it perish in a most tragic way out of fear _and hatred_ , and so you primed your heart to be a vessel of darkness and your body to become a soulless creature that used love as an excuse to help a psychopath who wore the trophies of his victims cheat death _again_.

"Really, Emma, which one was the _real_ psychopath? The one looking for some snatch who admitted he'd been a vile human being or the one trying to fill an empty void by latching onto the damaged soul of a pervert and deluding herself that playing God for a murderer out of love absolved her of her own evil incarnation?"

"I didn't make those choices," Emma tried to argue.

"You need to own your pride, Emma. You let it run unchecked," Pan reminded and shook his head. "I truly hate all of you, but I must Regina credit for admitting that she would murder, rape, and destroy all over again to fraudulently get your child... that soon after more-or-less went from overly disciplining to habitually neglecting almost as much as you, what with her lover's rape baby to raise. And people say I'm the worst parent our world ever produced? No. I owned my wrath. You shared your parents' delusion that you were actually doing right by your boy when you weren't breaking his heart and gaslighting him into forgiving you out of the same soul-crushing fear of abandonment and loneliness that you once understood, before it became your motivation for whoring and necromancy. Pride comes before the fall, Emma. And you've not fallen nearly far enough."

Before Emma could respond, Pan simply vanished, leaving her alone outside Baelfire's cave.

Emma looked at the cave door again, then back to where Pan was no longer standing. It was obvious she had to go inside, much as she did not want to. This place, this jungle, brought back too many uncomfortable memories, from her breakdown over realizing she still loved Neal to her rejecting his wide-eyed hope to try again - something she'd continued to do in Storybrooke, even though it was so very unfair and he'd tried so hard to fight for her.

She'd _never_ fought for him, not even to preserve his memory. She could shout to the starry void that she didn't have time, that without a soul how was the part of her that lived on supposed to? But she knew deep down that _was_ part of her, a twisted and incomplete part of her, but one that didn't so badly represent the person she'd been for a long time with her emotions repressed and distracted by cheap thrills. Like a person without a heart, it seemed a person without a soul still thought and felt when not being controlled... they just didn't feel the right things for the right reasons or in the right ways.

Maybe she was hear to figure out what 'right' was, because she'd forgotten or never really knew. Never understood why anyone would go all in when the price, the pain, could be so very high. It had taken _darkness_ to make her overcome that fear, but she'd faced it in the same fucked up way as Rumplestitlskin that wasn't overcoming it all, because Merlin, douchebag as he turned out to be, was right that darkness couldn't be used for good. And no being was meant to contain the extremes of both darkness and light - or even just light, soul or not, pure or not.

And her soul, like her heart, was certainly far from pure. She'd fallen far from the moment by Lake Nostos when Cora couldn't pull out her heart. She'd become someone entirely unlike the person she'd wanted to be for Henry even before she destroyed it all and reshaped it into a world where nothing made sense and all of her selfishness was shaped into a completely fucked up Emma Swan while all the rest of her could do was cry in the darkness at the horrible scars that thing's actionsleft upon her soul.

Now that thing was a part of her again, somewhat tamed but stronger for having been freed of conscience. It was like being host to the Dark One all over again, but it wasn't some foreign evil, it was a deviant side of her own making. A side that, maybe, if it hadn't been stripped away by her parents and then slapped back into place like a cheap ass bandaide wouldn't feel like a malignant growth.

With a grimace, Emma at last unsheathed Baelfire's cutlass and entered, expecting some dark and horrible test...

But instead it was just the cave, lit with the old coconut luminary that had gotten thrown in the fire back in Storybrooke. The stars danced about the walls which were covered in drawings, a talent Emma remembered Hook attributing to Neal's mother long before she made the connection that his mother was Milah - and by then she was in too deep, too much in what she thought was love... if a soulless being could love.

That wasn't her.

And it was her.

And either way it didn't mean she hadn't betrayed him.

"I'm sorry," she spoke to the flickering light. "I'm sorry I was a terrible friend. I'm sorry I didn't help you find your home, Baelfire."

Emma should have known better than to pick up the coconut.

As soon as it was in her hands the cave shifted, the items vanishing and the walls pushing outward until she realized that she was now in the Echo Caves... and a cage sat on the isolated outcropping, a shadowed figure inside.

Her heart pounded. Was that Neal?

Emma hadn't thought about it at the time, but it was very _Indiana Jones and the Search for the Holy Grail_. Of course, Merlin had found the grail and turned it into Excalibur and Nimue turned the broken tip into the dagger of the Dark One...

She had to tell her deepest secrets if she wanted to reach the cage and who or what was inside.

It was time to stop lying. It was time to admit to all of the bullshit she'd been trying to cover up.

Emma took a breath and steadied herself before stating shakily, "Cora was right. I gave my son away to save myself from having to be a stronger, better person - from having to be reminded of... of love and betrayal and my failures every day."

The first segment of the bridge jutted out and it was both a relief and filled her with shame. Could he hear her?

"I use sex, magic, and alcohol as a distraction from dealing with my problems."

Another few feet emerged and Emma swallowed thickly.

"I like feeling... special and... wanted even if I know it's for all the wrong reasons by the wrong people," Emma spoke shakily. "I know it's some messed up childhood shit and it usually means making the wrong choices, but I just... I can't help feeling like without it I'll just be a number in a file again."

Again the bridge extended.

Almost there.

Emma took another breath before admitting, her voice raised, "I don't know how to love right and I'm afraid to try. I didn't love my son enough - or myself enough - to be a better person for him, to be his mother when he was born or the mother he deserved after he showed up on my doorstep. I didn't let myself love his father enough to save him even though I knew he deserved a happy ending more than I did, even though I was letting the darkness take him away from Henry, because it was easier to have a love that was new and uncomplicated and superficial - and I've regretted that every moment I've been stuck in this fucking purgatory, and I know the empties wasn't just the absence of potential for darkness, or the absence of a soul, it was the absence of him and the shame that I didn't save him and that everything awful that happened after that was because of that one moment when I didn't try, when I was the Savior and I had magic and I didn't use it for the one person who deserved it, who needed it the most."

The final segment of the bridge extended, and Emma gripped her sword as she strode forward, heart in her throat.

She expected some movement from within, hoped and feared that Neal would be there, that this time she could say all the right things.

The figure didn't move, however, curled up in a cape, back facing her.

Emma immediately knew the cape, though, remembered Belle gifting it to Henry, explaining that Neal had taken it off before making that fateful choice with the key to the vault; she'd returned to Regina's castle with it... after which it had vanished for a time, eventually ending up in the back of Gold's shop.

"Neal?" Emma inquired, and the figure tensed in a way that she knew he was awake, but yet did not turn to face her. Her throat closed up before she forced a breath.

"Neal, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't save you. I'm sorry that I said I wished you were dead, but that was only because I love you so much and I was afraid of the pain of dealing with everything - and then losing you again. I did. I lost you twice _again_. And I should have grieved for you. I should have honored your life and your death. But I was angry. I was angry that you fucked up again and left me. And I was angry that you made me promise to find Tallahassee without you, because Tallahassee was _ours_ and how could you just give that away to find with someone who helped destroy your life?"

Again the figure stirred and a voice, muffled, but _clearly_ not Neal's answered, "What a pretty little speech."

Red hair spilled from the cape as the figure uncoiled like the snake she was and Zelena smiled in her unnatural way as the bars vanished.

"But words are meaningless, little swan," she continued. "As are intentions. Actions make reality. Actions define our lives. And yours add up to a pathetic, needy, lying, disloyal pirate's whore. And you know what happens to pirate whores? They get thrown _overboard_."

Zelena grabbed Emma by the scabbard strap at her shoulder and in one swift move threw them both over the edge into the gaping abyss.

* * *

AN: I'm not thrilled Pan is coming back for the 100th. Robbie deserves better... and probably better than Heroes Retcon. I hate Zelena as you readers probably know and hope Emma kills her annoying and useless character even if it means Regina gets another free baby to fuck up into a gaslit little perv-loving creep (or slut in this case, I guess) - but she makes me smile in fanfiction where her truthiness can be portrayed as such instead of bullshit for the "heroes" to disprove through the scientific method of dry humping.

Next up: Emma gets schooled in envy.


	12. Sorrow For Another's Good

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWELVE**

 **SORROW FOR ANOTHER'S GOOD**

Emma landed face down. Considering how hard the ground felt, it should have hurt - it should have killed her - but since she was dead, apparently she was now the metaphysical equivalent of Wile E. Coyote and got up without injury, brushing bits of dirt and grass from her Neverland clothes.

Surveying her surroundings, Emma appeared to be in a forest hollow, though the sort with broad-leafed, color changing trees rather than the pines of the Enchanted Forest - or Storybrooke for that matter. Reds, golds, yellows, and oranges fluttered in a crisp autumn breeze, here and there a leaf drifting down to the colorful carpet that seemed at odds with the unseasonably vibrant green grass.

The sound of crunching leaves immediately drew Emma's attention and she her cutlass as she spun, expecting Zelena, but instead it was a child with strangely colored orange skin and green-streaked blonde hair tied into puffy pigtails. Wide-eyed and clutching a flute, the child let out a startled "Eeeep!"

"It's okay!" Emma quickly assured while lowering her weapon. "See? We're cool. I'm just lost, Kid. Can you tell me where I am? And if you saw a green lady with red hair and questionable fashion sense?"

The child tipped her head and then crooked her finger, beckoning Emma closer as if to tell a secret. As she bent down, the kid suddenly raised the flute and blew-

At the sharp stinging pain in her neck, Emma realized the object the child had been clutching was not a flute at all, nor was the child a child... and apparently not female either given what looked like a creepily impressive erection tenting the crotch of the little creep's white overalls.

Head starting to swim, Emma pulled out a feathered dart and muttered, "Awe shi-" before the world cut to black...

Only to return with a pounding heartache and... humming?

Brows furrowing, Emma opened heavily-lidded eyes while realizing that her wrists and ankles were bound with... red vine licorice?

Also, she was naked.

And covered in what smelled like mole sauce, the chocolate goo smeared liberally on her skin.

Plus, there was an apple shoved into her mouth.

Needless to say, this was quite distressing, and made all the worse by the discovery that she was surrounded by a large group of small 'people' with orange skin and green-streaked hair tied into bizarre, almost cartoon styles from cinnamon-bun-like mohawks to bug antenna spikes. They all wore plaid shirts with either white overalls or jumpers (the women presumably even though there was no discernible anatomical difference) and were carrying a variety of cooking supplies while humming in unison.

One of the women approached her with a large bottle and doused her face in... cayenne pepper!

Emma let out loud sneeze - which _really hurt_ with her mouth full of an apple- and her captors stopped humming... and then chittered excitedly while her eyes burned horribly.

As Emma tried to struggle free of the ridiculous candy ropes, a group of stocky orange pigmies appeared carrying a very large two-ended lollipop and began singing uproariously.

 _"We represent the Lollipop Guild,_

 _The Lollipop Guild,_

 _The Lollipop Guild_

 _And in the name of the Lolly pop Guild,_

 _We welcome you to dinner in Mucha Loompa land._

 _We welcome you to dinner in Muncha Loompa land, Tra la la la la la la"_

It was pretty clear that this was a _Twilight Zone_ episode kind of culinary welcome as Emma found herself hoisted up like a pig on a spit. And her hosts continued singing as they carried her toward a currently unlit fire pit!

 _"Munchy crunchy bloody and goo_

 _You'll make a yummy supper or two!_

 _Munchy crunchy bloody and bone_

 _We'll roast you on a pit of fire and brimstone_

 _Munchy crunchy bloody and yum_

 _We'll take your fingers and soak them in rum_

 _And put a swizzle stick up you bu-"_

In a poof of green smoke just as the 'kid' was about to light the fire, Zelena appeared and the little people skittered back and hissed like a group of angry opossums.

"Oh, piss off you tetchy little freaks!"

They yelped and backed away fearfully, save one who tried to throw a bucket full of water. All it did was stain the hem of Zelena's black dress, drawing an eye-roll.

"I said _piss off_ before I turn you all into chalupas and feed you to the street Chihuahuas of El Dorado."

They hissed again, but scattered back into the undergrowth.

"You play one prank on a stupid bint from Kansas and suddenly everyone thinks you're allergic to water," sighed the Wicked Witch who with a snap of her fingers freed and cleaned Emma - and had her standing dressed, _of course_ , like teenage Dorothy, complete with pigtails and ruby slippers. She couldn't have even gone with adult, demon-hunter Dorothy... though, to be honest, that revelation was pretty much the nail in the coffin of Emma's like for _The Wizard of Oz_.

"Really!?" she huffed.

"It takes me back."

"To what? Did the Munchkins try to eat Dorothy too?"

"Of course not," Zelena retorted. "Munchkins were peaceful little vegan nutters. Those were Muncha Loompas."

"Muncha Loompas?"

"Were you not paying attention to their song?"

"I was kind of busy trying to escape being roasted alive!" Emma snapped.

"Yes, well, when you went back in time and stepped on a Monarch colony worth of butterflies, in the three years between your parents rewritten meet cute and your conception, that bloody psycho Author took a number of different paths than he would have otherwise, one of which was deciding to use his magic quill to morph Munchkins and Oompa Loompas into a single species... which resulted in psychotic cannibal pygmies who eat people while singing about turning them into dessert foods."

"That's... horrible."

"Yes, so one more of the many horrible things you are responsible for. The worst, of course, being A Galaxy Far Far Away."

"The... what?"

"That hack scribe destroyed the timeline of 'A Galaxy Far Far Away'. Instead of that big-eared creature being a masterful villain orchestrating the universe's most impressive deception, Scribey McShitstain, who couldn't write true love of it rammed its way up his small intestine like an angry gerbil, wrote away his powers and focused on turning the most reviled villain in all the universes into a whiny manchild obsessed with a spineless fool who compromised her career and integrity to bend to the whims of a stalker."

Crossing her arms, Emma scoffed, "You're just fucking with me to make some shitty parallel."

"I would never do that," Zelena scoffed, "but it is quite a coincidence how that applies, don't you think? But you're certainly no Princess Leia. Sure, she kissed her brother, but you fucked your own great grandfather repeatedly for years _and liked it_. Also, you know, the whole thing where your sense of justice and morality is completely self-serving - just like your parents."

Emma glared.

"I get it," she growled unhappily. "Falling for Hook was dumb. I neglected my kid and destroyed a universe - and apparently a lot of timeless literary worlds - for a fake romance based on lots of messed up emotions and fear of dealing with actual emotions and death and _an inability to give a fuck about actual emotions and death because I got my soul stuck in purgatory_ _ **thanks to your spell**_."

"My spell that was only cast because your mother is an idiot," Zelena retorted and mimicked Snow White, "Oh, look at me, so perfect and pure that I don't need to pay a price when I cast the Dark Curse to ensure my widdle Emma that I decided to replace with a new baby after telling her baby daddy to fuck off and not try to get back to her world would defeat the Wicked Witch and save my unborn replacement baby so all of that selfishness wouldn't be in vain - just like the last time around with the whole inutero 'make a perfect baby spell I'm sure there will be no consequences' thing."

Zelena snorted and began walking away from the fire pit. "Your dipshite mummy ripped out her heart because she couldn't live without her prince even though she was pregnant and had no idea if splitting her heart would resurrect or kill her and her baby - and she had the _nerve_ to criticize _you_ for wanting to kill me and ensuring my child _wasn't_ collateral damage?

"Of course," Zelena continued while Emma trailed a few steps behind in her uncomfortable shoes that should really have been silver instead of red, not that it mattered, "since she succeeded, the price was not paid. So you lost your magic, your brother was almost murdered, and a universe undone to turn your parents' meet cute into a shitey setup for your romance with the man who repeatedly tried to kill your family - and I lived to kill Marian and trick Robin into knocking me up.

" _And still_ your mother trusted me, even after the trying-to-kill-her-baby-and-rewrite-history-without-her-in-it _and_ murdering your baby daddy thing - though she obviously hated Neal since she reserved lending the 'I will always find you' family motto to situations involving alcoholic rapists.

"Aaaaaaaaaaanyway, long story short, I kidnapped you all and got Hook mortally wounded and you resurrected him so he could try to kill your entire family. Such fluffy full circle family feels!"

"Not really," sighed Emma.

Zelena rolled her eyes.

" _Obviously_. It's buggered up. And while I appreciated not having to endure nine months of pregnancy, I _don't_ appreciate you siding with my selfish, hypocritical bitch of a sister," Zelena snarled, "who fraudulently took _your_ baby after destroying your family forced you into a situation to have to give it up, who poisoned your kid, _who told you she would do it all over again to get her widdle baby moral compass_. You sacrificed your _soul_ for that drama queen attention whore who never did anything selfless in her entire life and was no more fit to raise anyone's child than your brainless parents _or you -_ because she _deserved_ a happy ending?"

Hands on her hips, Zelena turned toward Emma and relayed furiously, "Between Regina and Captain Grandpa, exactly how _bad_ does someone have to be for you to _not_ lay down your life for their unrepentant souls? Do you have a body count total? Killed no more than a thousand. Raped no more than fifty individuals or one individual for no more than fifty years? Do you _actually_ have some kind of messiah complex where you think your martyrdom will somehow save their souls? Because that's rubbish. And egotistical. And I _know_ narcissism."

"I don't have a 'messiah complex'," Emma huffed.

"Well, you've got _some_ kind of complex. Maybe a double standard one? Because somehow sending me off to Oz so Gigi could steal a third child, fourth if you count Roland considering she murdered Marian first-not that her troglodyte true love ever cared about that-was the absolute right thing to do."

"She went to the Underworld with me," sighed Emma. "I couldn't exactly judge her decisions."

Zelena snorted. "Oh, that's right, you have a _Little Orphan Emma Complex_. You can't possibly question the motivations or morality of anyone who expresses even the most vague smidgen of compassion toward you or they'll leave you alone forever. Bullshite affection based on codependent selfish desires and false overtures of gratitude to mask insecurity and self-loathing are the kind of love that every child and woman-child with the emotional maturity of a thirteen year old slut deserves."

"I was not a slut at thirteen!"

"So you _were_ a slut at some point, you admit it," smirked Zelena. "And that's _not_ what Lily told me."

Glaring, Emma grated, "Yes, well, Lily was a magically deviant little shit who took advantage of me."

"Ooooooo, in a kinky way? Did she pop your lesbian cherry?"

"No!"

"Hmm, pity, her mother scissored Gigi good before Isaac found out, and being massively homophobic unwrote their bisexuality and inserted some weird dragon bestiality bullshite that the Apprentice told everyone was Merlin transforming into a dragon, because... you know... that's even worse than fucking a flying monkey."

"Shut up! I didn't know he was a flying monkey! And he _wasn't_ when were... you know..."

"Were playing Hide the Banana? Funny, how in your world you learn about safe sex by rolling those rubbers on bananas, and you had unprotected sex with a banana enthusiastic. Plus, you know, the whole getting pregnant and abandoned by your boyfriend after unprotected sex thing. And you _still_ had your conscience and presumably self-worth at the time. What's your excuse? And don't say 'because nobody wuved me and I grew up on the mean stweets of Portwand.'"

"Okay, seriously, stop with the baby talk," Emma snapped, "or I will cut you. And I _do_ have an excuse. Your sister's fucked up fake memories that inserted her complete lack of emotional connection to anyone under the age of thirty and reduced my relationship with my son to playing video games, talking about my boyfriend, and making scrambled eggs in four inch stripper heals!"

"Okay, you get a pass on that one," Zelena conceded, walking again. "But once you got your wits back, you were still extremely witless. Sometimes I think your entire family shares a single brain cell that you borrowed from Dopey the Dwarf. Between your mother's pathological pep-talks in support of unhealthy romance stemming from her bloodline of plundering rapist supporters and your father's only qualities: dragon slaying and bro-ing around with villains, it's no wonder you're such a disappointment. The gene pool you popped out of is rather toxic."

"Like you and yours, you mean?"

"Oh, _snap_."

Zelena rolled her eyes and picked up the pace as she conveyed, "It was almost tempting to stay in Oz just to not have to deal with the stupidity, you know. Thank the gods that I was immune to flying monkey herpes! Though I suspect it was more the syphilis being spread by your pirate slut for three centuries on his supply runs that really made everyone such idiots! Good riddance to the original universe, really, it was an STD brain-fucked mess with a side of inbreeding and magical insanity. Getting rid of its bad fanfiction reboot is just cleaning up the lose ends."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No. Why should I care how you feel? I'm a psychopath. By definition, I'm incapable. And since we're both dead, I have no ulterior motive for which to pretend that I want you to feel better. I'm simply stating the facts as they stand. The original timeline was a bad movie. You fell down a time portal and created an even worse remake of that bad movie. I'm sure God is relieved to have that adolescent deity fanfiction wiped off the cosmic harddrive."

Emma let out a sigh, having no strength to argue further on the point. Plus, they'd reached what she assumed was _the_ Yellow Brick Road... or the metaphysical purgatorial equivalent.

"Why are we in Oz... or fake Oz anyway?" Emma demanded. "I get Neverland. I was actually there and dealt with emotional shite, but Oz? Did you just drag me here to get basted by Muncha Loompas?"

"Of course not. That was just a bonus," retorted the witch. "But it also served a point. The unholy quill splicing messed up their souls... such as literary character souls are, anyway. As you've probably been informed, you're the only one with the potential to be _real_ and bring about the transformation of the souls of all of our kind to exist with all the same benefits as the people who raised you and threw you in prison. Seems only fair. But, of course, God can't do things the _easy_ way, She has to pick some savior to get it done."

After a pause, Zelena uttered, "Oh, _wait_ , I _do_ have a selfish ulterior motive to care. Because right now we're all stuck. And we can't play in Hades _because it no longer exists_. We no longer have our literary equivalent of purgatory _because you destroyed existence_. We don't have our version of Heaven or Hell either. We're just drifting in the ether unless some angel plucks us out to have a chat with you, the prideful little bitch who was supposed to give us all a chance to break out of our trope and redeem ourselves - or damn ourselves - of our own _full_ free will, but instead reduced to having even less than the pathetic substandard existence we had written for us. So, yes, I care. In the words of your former sweetie pie, I feel hate for you. I want you to _suffer_."

"I'm sorry," Emma croaked out. "I didn't know so much depended on me. I-"

"Was selfish and stupid and slutty," Zelena cut her off. "The way I see it, God must have _wanted_ us gone and you were just the perfect pawn to get it done. Because otherwise what's the point of an omniscient being who created all of existence if she won't just snap her fingers and fix her mistakes born of centuries of neglect and the meddling of her underlings and exiled demons when they snowball out of control thousands of years later?"

"Um... humility?"

" _Manipulation_. We're all pawns. We've had our free will shackled from the beginning of our time by literary tropes inspired by the Muses and yet it's up to _us_ to free ourselves? Well, up to you. But when you had so many factors working against you - there's no way _God_ didn't know about all of it. You were set up to fail by all of the limited free will - free will limited by the Almighty Author - being used to its utmost bullshite levels to shape your path one way or the other until it was just one big clusterfuck of mixed agendas and careless stupidity that culminated inevitably in the end of existence and our fate hinging on...

"God only knows."

Zelena waved her hands around. "Maybe we'll all be reduced to this _Five People You Meet in Heaven_ rubbish, the Walmart Greeters of Purgatory, because it's not like our souls were made with the most expensive materials. We're the broken-down Volkswagen Beetles to the Ferraris of _the real world_ and now we're in the compactor and no one gives a shite."

"You're saying I shouldn't feel guilty, because all of this was meant to happen?"

"Oh, you _should_ feel guilty. If not for what happened, then for your complacency. I mean, you were a corrupt Sheriff, an ungrateful daughter, a shitey mother, and a giant skank who decided you was all heroic and went with it like one big slutty hypocrite who couldn't feel complete as a woman without a cock buried between her thighs.

"You reminded me of my sister, actually. Endless speeches about being a strong woman and a good mother punctuated by dry-humping her doofus lover in public. And, you know, getting everyone with a sense of honor to donate several days of their lives to save his sorry ass because everything was about her man. Her entire existence came down to being defined by a man. That was her character arc. And it was yours, of course, since that Fury was actually there for your fuckboy toy.

"But kudos to having the lady balls to let my sister offer herself up to death in his place. Real sporting of you! Of course, anything that benefited your plot to save Captain Chlamydia. Considering you screwed over your own kid and then dragged him and your parents to the Underworld for that abusive arsehole, I can't really give you points for letting my sister be an unwitting sacrifice."

"I made a lot of bad decisions..." sighed Emma.

"Just keep repeating it, and maybe that'll be enough. But I doubt it. Penance doesn't work like that. You don't get to say a bunch of prayers or mea culpas and be absolved," Zelena told her. "Believe me, you have to walk through _Hell_ to get purified, and I don't mean the watered down anti-amusement park of Hades with joyrides in Cruella's hotrod and a glorified carnival barker and magical goblet collecting hobbyist running the DMV. Real Hell makes the actual DMV seem like Heaven full of puppies and kittens and baby unicorn rainbow farts. Fake dying through magical bullshite is all fun and games compared to actual dying, and that half-arsed death became a real farce after your rewrote the universe, so own up to your selfish decisions, both with and without the better angel of your nature to keep all that nastiness inside you in check.

"That nastiness was _always_ there," Zelena continued. "But letting it out _ruined_ you. It made you a pathetic disgrace to feminism, something I care deeply about, even as a psycho, murderer, and rapist written to have the emotional maturity level of a small child. As a character, you made yourself desperate, irresponsible, unsympathetic, and entirely unlikable, which I doubt is what God was actually going for even in a self-sabotage 451 our little storybook. _That_ is what you did with your free will. You disgust me even more than I disgust myself, and I am quite unlikable."

"That's... self-reflective and insulting at the same time," snorted Emma as she almost tripped over a rock that turned out to be an angry hedgehog.

"Baby steps, my therapist says," Zelena replied, ignoring Emma's attempt to kick away the ankle-attacking critter. "If only Freud was still allowed to proscribe cocaine. But anyway, as I was saying, all of your insecurities _and_ confidence boiled down to that dick you were sucking like it was permanently shoved down your throat, in your cunt, and up your arse twenty-four seven. Even I had more integrity as a living, breathing woman with a soul that had half the free-"

Zelena finally glanced over her shoulder and with a flicker of her hand the spiney mammal was turned to stone.

Her ankle socks shredded and cuts all over her calves, Emma glared at the Wicked Witch.

"Oh, don't give _me_ that look. I'm not responsible for the psychotic wildelife around here... other than the flying monkeys. _I'm_ the one who has every right to be digusted with _you._ Which I have been, ever since you came to see me in my cell. And _that_ is why I wouldn't take your deal. It had nothing to do with your family or mine. I simply had zero respect for you as a woman and a person, never mind a Dark One, when you had the potential for the greatest dark power at your disposal and squandered every part of it for a complete loser who was just manipulating you to get into your crocodile skin pants.

"I mean, really," Zelena scoffed. "You couldn't fight it because your biggest fear _was moving in with that douchebag_. You didn't fight it - to save that douchebag. And you used that power to give it _to_ that doucbebag _and_ cover up that you did. You gave not only your _heart_ but your character arc, the most important part of a story, what in essence amounts to a soul in our existence - not that you actually had one, but still - to a man wholly undeserving of it. Soul or no soul, that's just pathetic, Emma. As pathetic as making out with the creep who admitted to your father that he only saved the man to get into your pants.

"Obviously, you have serious self-esteem issues and an even more warped conception of love than I do, and I'm a bona fide psychopath raised by an alcoholic prick who regularly called me a freak of nature that should have been left to die by the side of this Yellow Brick Road."

As Zelena finished, they had turned a corner and the Emerald City appeared in the distance. Or the burning ruins of it, anyway.

Maybe real Purgatory was a lot like Hades. Or Hades was just a cheap knockoff the real deal, Emma supposed was the more apt description.

"I feel for you, I do," said Zelena with false sympathy in her voice, "in as much as a psychopath who lacks the capacity for empathy can. I have no conscience, but without your soul, you were much the same, driven by desires, instincts, incapable of truly understanding the feelings of others, through you learned tricks, even fooled yourself into thinking you could feel something genuine for another human being that isn't selfish. And now... now you have your empathy back, that part of you that was shackled in torment in the dark void, but the rest of you went for so long without it that now you've got yourself an internal struggle between self-loathing and denial. Fun times."

"Not really."

"The consequences of envy are never rainbows and unicorn queefs."

"Envy? You're saying I'm an _envious_ person?"

"Of course. What you never had with your parents and they had with your brother, what my sister had but you never did with your son. If you couldn't have that for yourself, you wanted them to suffer, to be consumed by guilt - as well they should have, quite honestly.

"You envied their true love, but yours was dead, in part due to their selfish refusal to accept him as part of your family, and so you sought to undermine theirs, to prove it selfish and shallow with your own mockery of it.

"You envied my sister's bond with Henry, and you sought more than once to undermine it, to make yourself the favored parent - but all you did was weaken your own tenuous bond with the boy. If he wasn't so brainwashed as to think it normal that all of his relatives used him as a pawn for their own needs, he would have emancipated himself and run back to New York City as soon as he got his memories back."

Emma grimaced and the Wicked Witch continued, "Envy is a heavy weight. Like greed and lust, it's characterized by an insatiable desire. Some mistake it for jealousy as both feel discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or rewards. But envy is so much more. It's the desire to covet things to deprive other people of theirs.

"Most poetically, envy is the sorrow for another's good," said Zelena. "We see others who are happy - or who seem happy in comparison - and we want that for ourselves, to take it from them and see them brought down to our level of misery, of wanting. Was that not what you felt when Neal revealed his fiancé? And did that not influence you to callously push him away every time he wanted to talk? Even influence you to spurn him for the pirate, to allow him to die in the forest day, punishment for his moving on without you, even if that moving on was a fraud. How tragic for you both.

"That's what comes from growing up without love, without material things, being told you are not good enough to have them, that you never will. But it also doesn't excuse it. I tried that card many times, and it's shite. You can't blame being an arsehole on others for everything. Eventually, an arsehole is just an arsehole."

Emma ducked her head and argued, "I didn't want people to be miserable. I didn't want Neal to die. I _didn't_."

"Oh, not everyone, and not the good part of you, but certainly some part deep in your heart," Zelena shot back, "and that was enough to keep true love magic from working and instead doom a man who had suffered for the better part of three hundred years as an unwanted child to never seeing his own child grow up, to being cast into the void when your soul was ripped away by your own doing and the fabric of our universe began to unravel with multiplying Dark Ones and nonsense magic-creating artifacts.

"Poor Baelfire couldn't even _look down on you_ \- though I'd say that was a blessing, not having to watch that soulless mannequin of yours spouting epic love speeches at the man who destroyed his life and conspiring with the father whose life he sacrificed his own for so the bastard could trade his redemption for deeper villainy in order to help you drag to the Underworld his son who had given up grieving him to instead help his quasi-step-father-slash-step-grandfather-slash-actual-great-great grandfather pick out the perfect pirate fuckpad to turn into Tallahassee."

Emma sunk to her knees in the weeds at the side of the Yellow Brick Road. "I didn't know," she choked out, eyes filling with tears. "He... he couldn't see me... because he _hates_ me. That's it, isn't it? I destroyed Tallahassee and Neal _hates_ me."

"Are you surprised? Even not knowing what you did to him, you knew how you betrayed him in every other way," sneered Zelena. "I may have taken his life, but you stabbed his soul repeatedly. You _are_ pathetic."

The Wicked Witch snapped her fingers again and a broom appeared in her hand. As she mounted it, Emma croaked, "How do I get out of here? Back to... to... where I'm supposed to go?"

"Ask your former flea-bitten lover," Zelena replied and added with a smirk, "I'm sure it warmed the cockles of Walsh's huckster heart that you mourned his loss even after he conned and essentially raped you for eight months. _Tootles_."

Zelena lifted off and shot away in the opposite direction from the ruined Emerald City, leaving Emma alone, with no choice but to get back to her feet and slog onward toward the smouldering skyline that seemed appropriately symbolic of her life.

* * *

 **AN: Oz is a two-parter. It didn't start out that way, but I couldn't resist another interlude.**

 **Next Up: Emma reaches the Emerald City. What will she find there? Not a warm welcome, most-likely. This isn't West Oz.**


	13. Ex-Lovers' Revenge

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Warning:** _ **Game of Thrones**_ **levels of viewer discretion advised. Extreme character torture ahead. Also, the usual absurd amount of profanity, because what is fanfiction but a void into which you can scream all of your "fuck you's" from the week?**

* * *

 **CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

 **EX-LOVERS' REVENGE**

(a second interlude in getting a clue)

By the time Emma reached the smoldering gates of the Emerald City, her feet had blisters and her blisters and bunions. She hadn't come across any scarecrows, tin men, or lions, just a flock or crows that pooped on her head, a rusty barbed wire fence inexplicably strung across the road that snagged her 1940's farm girl dress, and a feral house cat that made that hedgehog look sweet.

In short, Emma was filthy, tattered, and picking globs of orange fur from the scratches on her arms and legs when she came upon the city's welcome sign. Well... less welcome and more warning. Someone had added " _ **Abandon all hope, ye who enter here**_ _"._

No one guarded the massive green doors that were hanging off their hinges and it was with apathetic trepidation that Emma slipped through the gap into the city's enclosed interior.

Yes, apathetic and trepidation were mutually exclusive adjectives, but considering that Emma's entire life consisted of being forced into unknown situations that were likely to be disappointing at best and physically and emotionally traumatic at worst, she had become so familiar with the 'fight for flight' feeling that she quickly squashed it down, resigned to her fate of every good thing in her life eventually being snatched away, usually with the revelation that some or all of it was a massive lie perpetrated by those she had trusted and even sometimes loved.

This whole whatever it was thing since dying was just one continuous 'adventure' in getting fucked up the ass, so whatever lay ahead in the Emerald City couldn't possibly be much worse.

Well, maybe the _smell_ could, Emma revised her assessment as she got her first whiff of death and broken dreams Oz style. It was a worse stench than that time she accidentally made a wrong turn and took Henry to New Jersey on his winter break when trying to go back to Boston to visit the friends he never really had and were just figments of his Regina-addled imagination.

And like that whole year living a lie, Emma was sure nothing good would come of this day-tripping.

She just hadn't expected something putrid to drip out of the sky onto her shoulder.

The 'something' she discovered upon looking skyward was the rotting remains of three women hung by the large-broached necklaces at their throats, the chains twisted tight and fastened to ropes that swung in the breeze from a large buttress. Their big glittery hairdos were still immaculate, their heaving bosoms a putrid shade of purple, and it was the gases produced by the decomposition of their corpses that was stinking up the courtyard.

Emma covered her nose against the stench as she hurried onwards only to let out shriek as a Flying Monkey appeared out of the shadows. It didn't grab her and leap into the sky, however. Instead it paused, looked a her with glassy eyes, and then limped on its way toward a broken and toppled statue of "Oz the Great" where it disappeared into the shadows, hidden but for making unsettling wheezing sounds.

"Where _is_ everyone?" Emma muttered to herself, getting a _Twilight Zone_ sort of feeling.

"Dead."

The voice came from behind and Emma spun around, getting _really_ tired of doing that. Why did all of her crazy companions have to sneak up on her? It was so cliché!

"Dorothy?" she sputtered, surprised and relieved... but Dorothy didn't look remotely happy to see her nor willing to help.

"Nice threads," the farmer's niece scoffed while stowing in a rather large knife in the holster on her Tomb Raider outfit. "You shouldn't have come."

"Zelena sent me. She said-"

"Your family has a pathological problem with trusting psychopaths," snorted the other woman.

Grimacing, Emma conceded, "Yeah, I know.

With a glance back at the Flying Monkey, she asked Dorothy, "What happened here?"

"Besides here not being _really_ here? Well, it's more-or-less a representation of the real Oz in its final days," the brunet answered, leaning against a cracked green pillar. "Everyone caught Flying Monkey Herpes. For some reason it was far more virulent here than in the Land Without Magic. Probably the magic. People went crazy and began killing each other after they found the Good Witches and demanded a magical cure, but Glinda and her cult were just a group of bimbos who found some magical jewels and liked to sit around giving themselves magical boob jobs, so they couldn't help."

"Because I screwed up the universe..."

Dorothy snorted. "No, they were always like that. If Wonderland was the realm of arrogant weirdoes, Oz was the realm of egocentric idiots. Anyway, between the madness and the plague itself, the city only lasted a few years."

"If it's just corpses and a few diseased Flying Monkeys, then why did Zelena send me here? And how am I supposed to get... ah..." Emma trailed off, not sure how to complete that sentence.

"Home?"

"I'm not sure what that is, being dead," sighed Emma. "I'd like to think it's Heaven, but the way things have gone so far, it doesn't seem like I'm heading there. I thought I understood how Purgatory works from the Underworld, but it turns out that was apparently God's fanfiction bullshit to fuck with 'not real' people who're just... puppets in some badly conceived morality play for actual humanity to ignore."

"Though ignoring it's maybe for the best, all things considered.," Dorothy scoffed, then shrugged and admitted, "It was hard to accept that I wasn't real. Not _really_ real. My world seemed so _normal_."

"Apart from the lack of color thing, you mean," snorted Emma.

"I thought I was color blind and the magic here let me see... I think... maybe," sighed Dorothy. "My backstory wasn't well flushed out. Lots of metal gaps attributed to tornado concussion memory loss."

"Sometimes it feels like my life is like that too," Emma uttered glumly. "And I have no way to know if it was _always_ that way - if Merlin did something, if Ingrid did something, if Regina's memory spell is making me remember things wrong or not at all, or if it's just that... retrograde rewriting of history thing because of the time spell. Dates are all messed up, you know? Why did I get sent from Boston to Minnesota? Did my first family move there when they almost adopted me or was it something else? Did I run away before I ran away from that group home but someone made me forget? Because sometimes I swear I lived in Worchester when I was sixteen, but it was nineteen ninety-six, which makes no sense, and I got arrested. But then I know I lived in Minnesota at the group home and I was just a kid still then and the first time I was arrested was when I was seventeen in Portland, but I don't know if it was two thousand or two thousand and one. And I can't have been seventeen even though I had a juvenile record, but that doesn't make sense. I mean, I had Henry, and I know I was pregnant with him and I remember giving birth to him, but chronologically, it's like I wasn't even pregnant as long as Zelena!"

"Well, you fucked up time, girl," said Dorothy, rolling her eyes. "Lot's of shit stopped making sense. How was I sixteen when I first got to Oz at the same time Zelena was plotting against her sister who was married to your grandfather and we all aged completely differently or not at all even without factoring in that dumbass Dark Curse? Twenty eight plus years, I should be like... fifty, but my ass was tighter than yours when last we had the displeasure of crossing paths thanks to your cunt of a step grandmother BFF."

Dorothy smirked at her own vulgarity, amending, "Girl, you have shit taste in friends _and_ lovers, and your family deserved to be unwritten from the storybooks they defiled with their incestuous villain-loving. I thought I was a bit messed up after having to move in with my aunt and uncle, but honestly, I pity you that you had so little comprehension of what love is and your own self-worth that you repeatedly and desperately debased yourself to get the obsessive and abusive affection of sociopaths, assholes, and parents who told your baby daddy to fuck off so they could make a better you from scratch without having to deal with your screwed-up-ness that they failed to fix pre-natally because they want only perfect kids. If they weren't such selfish imbeciles who set this whole mess in motion and did absolutely nothing but enable you being a stupid bitch for the back half of your life after magically making you an emotionally dead inside bitch for the front half, I'd feel sorry for them having to put up with you."

"Gee, tell me what you really think," sighed Emma.

"Imagine if I actually knew you _well_ ," retorted Dorothy with a smirk.

Suddenly there was a loud _whooshing_ sound a shadow blocked out the sun - what wasn't already blocked by smoke. A _dragon_ swooped down, landing in the courtyard and with a burst of fiery breath charred the pathetic Flying Monkey to a crisp before transforming into a petite but voluptuous woman with dark hair and brown skin.

"Nice of you to join us, Lils," Dorothy scoffed before pulling the stranger into a smoldering kiss.

Emma startled, but spied the mark on the woman's arm. "Lily? But... you... I mean... you're...?"

"Not a big-ass straight white woman anymore?" snorted Lily. "That racist homophobic asshole Author fucked me over. He hated the Apprentice, thought he was pathetic and a sellout for doing Merlin's bidding and orchestrated things to ensure that your pirate murdered him. He made sure Gueneivre was trapped in a rape marriage with a psychotic white man as punishment for loving a black guy too. Also, the thing with Ursula being voice raped by your pirate and that genie, he wanted him to be freed by your grandfather and wrote his lamp to the shore just so he'd get enslaved even worse. Also, I'm pretty sure he had something to do with writing out Aurora's gay so Mulan would be forever alone and unhappy after being used and tossed out by that Anne Hache slut werewolf.

"Seriously, I don't know what that geezer was thinking going to _1960's America_ to look for a new Author," Lily concluded, "And then trapping him in a book? Like _that_ was going to stop his master plan!"

"Wait... how exactly did Isaac orchestrate all of that from inside a book?" Emma asked, confused.

"In the wise words of Merlin, the hottest black man to ever grace our fictional-verse before being tragically-and-hate-crime-ily cut down by the most over-rated and secretly-prematurely-balding-but-for-special-werewolf-cum-potion-he-got-from-Rumplestiltskin white man rapist to ever grace our fictional-verse: It doesn't matter, bitch. Just like how Arthur Pendragon was maybe supposed to be my father, but then I got whitewashed and since my mama's white, that wouldn't fit with the whole slavery and subjugation theme Isaac was going for, so that just became a plothole and I've got no daddy and spent the rest of my life carrying around your dark bullshit while you got to shit all over my light, because you and your parents were too busy caring about your dead pirate to resolve the whole fucked up magic issue!

"Aaaaaaanyway," Lily amended, "being dead has its benefits. I may be trapped in limbo forever because I'm a fictional character incapable of salvation thanks to you fucking up your divine mission - but I can turn into a sweet-ass dragon and twerk my sweet Latina ass!"

She smacked her ass proudly, then amended, "But I am still fucking pissed off at you for the magic thing, not to mention shooting me with a canon and laughing about it and high-fiving your fuckboy and your dumbass kid like I never meant anything to you, which I forgot to mention when I was alive in _Hell_ with you, because thanks so much for dragging me there, you dumb slut! I can't believe I actually liked you and you Piper'd me!"

"Oh, please, you Vause'd me first, lying about being an orphan with no family!" Emma argued.

"Because I was afraid of getting caught _and had a magical dark shit complex_. You were just a controlling, manipulative bitch when you fucked me over, Emma!"

"I'm sorry," she pitifully replied.

"Yeah, well, I don't forgive you. But I do pity you. How does that feel to be the one _I_ pity? You're the fuck-up who can't do anything right now," Lily declaired with a smirk. "How's that for a plot twist?"

"We should go, Lils," interjected Dorothy. "It's almost nightfall."

Lily stepped back and transformed into a dragon then. Emma watched the Kansas farm-girl-slash-demon-hunter climb onto Lily's back and with a shout of, "Peace out, Bitch!" and a middle finger salute as they took off into the darkening puke green sky.

Which was annoying and insulting enough, without the loud and noxious dragon fart that her former best friend lit on fire, turning the dead witches to ash and nearly taking off Emma's hair with it.

She really should have picked better friends, Emma decided, while picking bits of Glinda out of her hair. Even the 'good guys' were actually assholes. But then maybe that was just how the stories and people that made up her reality were supposed to be: no heroes or villains, just a _lot_ of assholes.

Pondering that, Emma made her way toward the large emerald palace with its broken windows and dead monkey corpses rotting on the spires. Surely, there had to be some portal that would get her out of here, since clicking her heals had only served to make her bunions bleed: as if Zelena would have given her _real_ magical slippers!

The palace was large and cavernous but also opulent and it didn't seem that the Emerald City Dwellers had looted the upper levels where there were endless guest quarters and what Emma assumed had once been quarters for a royal family.

She was just about to flop face down on one of the beds when she heard laughter coming from a room down the hall. It was definitely masculine laughter, and more than one person. Zelena _had_ mentioned Walsh, but she'd started to think the witch was just having her on.

She wasn't.

When Emma reached the threshold, she found Walsh sitting at a table... with Graham and Jefferson! They were playing poker while guzzling some green beverages and eating from a pile of buffalo wings.

Her stomach rumbled and they all turned away from their game.

"Emma!" Walsh crowed, "you're _late_."

"For a very important date!" quipped Jefferson.

"She never dated you," sighed Graham. "You drugged her and tried to shoot her."

"I know, and that's obviously her thing! But I had a kid, of course, and she doesn't like kids."

"What!? I like kids! I _have_ kids!"

"A son you neglected horribly and a daughter who grew up evil due to incest and being parented by a soulless loser and a heartless psychopath," pointed out Graham.

"FYI: You're the soulless loser," quipped Walsh.

"Yeah, I gathered that," Emma grumbled.

"You know," continued Graham, "I helped you put down roots in Storybrooke so Henry could have an _actual_ parent who cared about him, who put his needs first, because I never had that. I _died_ for that. But you left me dead. Went after your dick pirate."

"I... I thought you were in Heaven."

"And, what, you worried you'd rip me out of eternal peace and happiness and I'd turn into an abusive, self-destructive rapist?"

"Yeah, Emma," sniggered Walsh, "This was real life, not _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. And you already had your quota of those, anyway. There was no need for you and Captain Hot Guy McDouchebag putting on that bad cosplay remake. Jesus, that was hard to watch."

He nodded to Graham and Jefferson. "At least I had my sidekick bros to help make sarcastic comments."

"Hold up," Jefferson seethed, "you think _you're_ the leader of this group?"

"Duh. I am the _Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz_. Who actually got that woman over there to bang me. You're just some bipolar nut who lost his magic hat and fixated on her magical ability to get your daughter back so you could be a seriously unstable parent that drove Gracie to pole dancing."

"Yes, well... at least she didn't marry Henry!"

Gesturing to Graham, Walsh amended, "And he's a heartless people-hating assassin who fixated on Emma because her mother was the only target he let go and he had some delusion that she could cure his sociopathy, because we all know that even if you don't have your heart, you _still feel shit_."

"Hey! At least I didn't rape anyone! I _got_ raped!" Graham argued. "Which no one remembered or cared about!"

He pointed to Emma. "You best-friended my rapist murderer and sacrificed whatever was left of your soulless conscience to give her a happy ending with the guy whose wife she killed! You are even more messed up than I am! I wholly regret that I 'fixated' on you in any positive way! I should have done Regina's bidding and killed your disloyal, rape-apologist skank ass!"

"Well, we can't kill her now," sighed Jefferson, "she's dead."

"Yeah, but we can make her suffer!" reminded Walsh.

"I still have my darts!" recalled Graham. "This time I won't miss!"

Obviously, this is what Zelena wanted, Emma realized, and she took off at a run, as fast as her ruined feet could take her - which wasn't fast enough, because Walsh suddenly appeared in a poof of green smoke, swirling Glinda's wand.

And Jefferson and Graham appeared with the other dead witch's wands, surrounding her.

"You don't have magic here," Walsh reminded. "But _we_ do. Now... remember that thing you wouldn't do, no matter how many times I brought it up in bed?"

Emma's eyes widened. "Oh, _hell no_! Get away from me, you sick fuck!?"

"You're going to tell me you never let your pirate stick his sword in the wrong hole?" scoffed Graham. "We've been watching you, remember? We watched _all_ of those rape fantasies he played out with you."

"We read the stories he published on fetish websites about it too," said Jefferson. "Not that we liked them, of course, but being dead is boring."

"Just like being married to you was boring," amended Walsh. "All that stuff he wrote, those fantasies he couldn't carry out because of the heart-sharing thing that made you wet for his every need without the fear and the domination."

"Poor fucker," Jefferson dismayed. "You ruined him for his favorite pastime by shackling him to you."

"I saved his life!"

"A life not worth saving. Just like yours now," said Graham. "You had the potential to be a good person once, but you threw that away even before you ripped out your soul and handed over half your heart to a man who'd have surely murdered me himself if I'd survived, just to eliminate the competition. After all, he failed to inform you of what had happened to your baby daddy, didn't he? 'Oh, Neal will show up like he always does'. If he'd told you what had really happened, maybe you could have been prepared and found a loophole - like sharing your heart. But you only care about the hearts of murderous assholes, apparently, not the people who actually sacrificed themselves to help you succeed in the mission you tore up, shite on, and set on fire because it conflicted with your sudden infatuation over being in an emotionally abusive relationship that made my fling with Regina seem positively healthy."

"You're a stupid whore," piped up Walsh, "who deserves to suffer. I could have been free if Zelena wasn't obsessed with you. If you had even given a damn about me after finding out she'd turned everyone into her pets, I'd have had a chance. You didn't even come to my funeral, bitch, and you claimed you cared about me and used my death in some self pity-party make-out session? Fuck you, Emma Swan. Also, you gave me HPV and syphilis!"

"You gave me Monkey Herpes!"

"And you didn't have the good grace to die from it or any other of those diseases you acquired being a skank because of your fucking special magical immunity to death!"

"Hey," mused Jefferson, "at least it was fun watching Killy Poo come to the realization that he was not long for the world as his half a heart quickly went the way of its better - though not by much - half."

"Yes, tragic," sniggered Walsh. "Poor bastard had to watch you sacrifice your life _and his_ for some little brat that he knew but decided never to tell your or Henry wasn't your biological kin, what with his getting drunk and sleeping with Henry's wife and knocking her up."

Emma's jaw fell open. "Wait... Henry's... my... she was...?"

"Come on, you're surprised? Fucking the wives of the 'Stilstkin men was his thing," Jefferson reminded. "I mean, the dude practically said he wanted to fuck Henry's girlfriend when she was thirteen."

"You sooooooooooo fucked up with your choices," Graham sniggered. "It's one incestuous ouroboros that began and ended with your lover's dick.

"Also," added Walsh, "he gave Henry's wife syphilis and HPV which she gave your son, which is probably why he grew up to be such a dumb shit who never suspected the cuckold."

"Man, true love is a bitch in our world, eh?" mused Jefferson. "The real love always dies and gets replaced with diseased creeps. I don't know if God was playing a sick joke on all of us, if that was actually supposed to teach Her real babies a lesson, or if she just didn't give a flying fuck about our happiness."

"Combination of all three?" proposed Graham. "All I know is that I got a raw deal so Emma here could get shagged by a much bigger asshole than me with a much smaller cock."

"True," agreed Walsh, "and you _are_ an asshole. Probably, you shouldn't have forcibly kissed her. Made her think that was how all British guys with abandonment issues showed genuine and healthy affection and that it was always her fault."

"Yeah, well, it _was_ ," Graham argued. "And if Regina's curse hadn't given me a much nicer personality, I'd have showed Little Miss Bra Tease exactly how much of a man I am."

Emma gaped. "Youwould have _raped_ me?"

Graham scoffed. "You thought I was a good guy? Well, you obviously didn't read anything but your parents retconned story in that stupid book. Regina got tired of shagging a bad boy and wanted me to be her whipped puppy. Like Monkey Boy said, I saved your mom because she was _hot_. I kissed you because of some magical bullshit connection to my past. You really do have her chin. She's got better tits and ass, though. And I'd have tapped that if I'd had all of my faculties about me as soon as I got my memories back - had I not dropped dead instead. I'd have had you bent forward over that desk before you could say 'happily ever after'. And you would have felt dirty and defiled but _wanted_ and decided that you were in love with me because you are so pathetic. And we'd have lived happily ever after, as far as your fucked up definition of that goes.

"Unfortunately, I died."

"As did I," lamented Walsh, "before I could get you tied up and gagged. I had a variety of toys."

"I love toys!" giggled Jefferson. "Can we play now? All of this talk is boring, bros! Let's have a tea party with Emma Swan as our guest of honor!"

"You're one crazy motherfucker, Jefferson," said Walsh, "but why not?"

A cloud of magic smoke enveloped them all and when it faded away, Emma found herself once more naked and tied up, her ankles shackled to metal loops in the floor and her arms strung up by chains, pulled so tight she could feel her calves and biceps immediately start to cramp.

"Oh, this brings back memories," Graham mused while holding a cup of tea. "Of course, I was the one tied up in Regina's sex dungeon against my will. I never gave her the satisfaction of screaming... though keeping her screaming probably kept me alive. She was prone to throwing out people like a child does used toys. Kind of like _you_."

"I'm sorry," Emma croaked. "Just because I didn't visit your grave doesn't mean I didn't still care!"

"Liar liar pants on fire," scoffed Jefferson after munching on a cucumber sandwich. "Well, if you had pants."

"Personally," interjected Walsh, "I'm not into the Brazilian thing. I like at least a welcome mat so I know I'm not going down on a thirteen year old girl. Guess the pirate wanted the only curly hair in their relationship to be on his chest."

"Oh, he complained about choking on pubes if he even had to make the effort," said Graham, "and little Miss Battered Wife Syndrome couldn't get to the salon fast enough. This is a woman who called thongs 'butt floss' and considered high heals part of a misogynist conspiracy against women - until she got herself happily brainwashed into dressing like a slutty June Cleaver who waxed her beaver. I knew Emma had some issues when she came to town, but I didn't think she'd go so quickly from a bad-ass bountyhunter hauling in narcissistic deadbeats to letting one pound her in the ass over my desk."

"IT WAS ONE TIME!" Emma exclaimed. "He... he was drunk and he... slipped..."

"Please," scoffed Jefferson. "That man was a three hundred year old functional alcoholic date rapist who could find a vagina in his sleep. He just wanted to see if he could get away with it. And he did. And instead of kicking him in the dick, you let him convince you that it was your fault and you walked your aching anus all the way over to Granny's to buy _him_ grilled cheese and onion rings, _your_ favorite food that he co-opted, like he adopted everything of yours so you had no individuality left as a means of controlling you - and not only did you fall for that con, you willfully let _yourself_ become like _him_ to cater to his narcissism. He couldn't possibly love anyone as much as himself unless you were basically his doppelgänger with tints and a cunt."

"You should listen to him," said Walsh with a nod. "Being insane gives him a certain insight into the mind of other lunatics. You got _played_ , sweetie. I guess it's your thing, going all the way back to your first."

"Neal loved me," Emma defended. "It wasn't his fault."

"I'm talking about your brief stint as a Lesbian. And he totally did play you whether he loved you or not. You're the poster child fool for 'fools fall in love'. You fall for people who can't love you or won't love you, but you're so sure that they can and they do that you sacrifice everything about yourself to be what they want, lest they realize you're just a sad, pathetic little girl with nothing to offer and leave you."

"You don't even know who you are anymore, do you?" asked Graham. "You just emulate the people you think love you so they don't leave you. And then you gave up your soul and what little individuality, what uniqueness you still had left, was locked away out of reach, making you nothing but a series of fuck-based personalities."

"Sadly," interjected Jefferson, "none of them were particularly interesting. Especially that 'Dark Swan'. I mean, Merlin's balls, woman, you couldn't even Dark One right. You were just a pale, deadpan faced, bright red lipped, white hair flocked disappointment whose biggest baddest act was to screw over your own kid because you _were afraid to move in with your asshole boyfriend_."

"True that," Walsh nodded. "Your dark magical powers consisted of moping and making empty threats in your best 'I am Batman' voice. You were trying _so_ hard to sound like a supervillain, but you failed so horribly at every aspect of it other than just, you know, being a regular old asshole to your family. Between your _Wickerman_ sacrifice impersonation in Camelot, the submissive 50's date night look you coveted with such nostalgia, and being the bitch of an even lamer Dark One than you, you set feminism back to the fifties - and kept it from ever manifesting at all in the magical worlds."

Graham smirkingly amended, "You're a white racist misogynist asshole's perfect match, Emma. I mean, your pirate murdered Merlin in cold blood and not only did you recant your threat that killing the guy would be the end of your relationship forever, you literally turned the dead guy to dust to blow away the evidence. That's fucked up, Emma. I never took you for a racist - but then I never thought you'd murder anyone _or_ cover up the murder of a good man by a sociopath just so you wouldn't have to risk being alone. That's messed up."

"Really messed up," agreed Jefferson. "And I'm insane."

"You're the reason that all of our lives sucked," Walsh spoke up. "You were supposed to save us, Emma. Instead you saved all the wrong people and didn't even help them become better. You're a loser and an asshole and a whore who deserves to be punished!"

Emma struggled and began to panic as her former almost fiancé grabbed a cat-o'-nine-tails from the wall. "W-what are you going to do to me?"

"The kind of things that rapist fangirls should find a real turn-on," quipped Jefferson and he feigned a British accent, "Oooo, Emma, luv, you made me try to kill you and your family and call you a pathetic cunt who'll never be loved by anyone with your fear of commitment!'"

He switched to an American falsetto. "Oooo, Killian, being at fault for all your murdering and assholery makes me _so_ wet! I forgive you. Take my heart along with my dignity! I love your cock more than my parents and son and the safety of this whole town! Kiss me so hard I feel your tongue in my pussy!"

Graham and Walsh sniggered while Emma began to plead, "Please, let me go. I'm sorry!"

"I was her first victim. I deserve to go first!" Graham exclaimed, ignoring her.

"Can't argue with that. Just leave her conscious enough for us!"

Emma turned desperate, "I get it. You're lives sucked because of me. I know I hurt you," she directed at Graham, "and I didn't honor your sacrifice in any wa-"

The whip cracked against her flesh and Emma was so shocked that he'd done it and from the excruciating sting that she wasn't able to hold in her scream.

"That's for not believing me," hissed Graham, "when I told you I had no heart."

His arm flew back and again crack bit into Emma's back again.

"For my death. You didn't even try CPR. What did you think shaking me was going to do? Did I look like a fucking Magic 8 Ball?"

Again.

Emma screamed.

"For defiling my memory by wearing my bootlace, by keeping my jacket and boots in the office where you fucked your own great grandfather."

Three lashes.

"For never visiting my grave."

Again.

" _For utterly destroying the office of Sheriff and everything that justice stands for!_ "

The last lash was the hardest and Emma wept as she felt the blood seeping from the wounds on her back. This couldn't be happening, her mind buzzed. Did she deserve this kind of punishment? Raped by her former husband. Tortured by her former sort-of lovers... and... whatever Jefferson was.

 _Yes, you do_ , a voice in her head answered, one that sounded distinctly like Killian Jones and concluded with a smirking "luv".

Did she really, or was it just her messed-up-ness once again saying everything was her fault and she deserved to take the brunt of the blame?

These are the questions that swirled in her mind after they'd left her there.

* * *

Emma didn't know how long she was left alone, two days, maybe three. It was dark and she ached so much that she couldn't sleep, including the ache of hunger that they taunted when they finally did return.

"I'll give you something to swallow, sweetie," Walsh sniggered.

At this point, Emma was so weak and hungry that it was tempting. To be able to get her arms free, let her knees give out - and disgusting as it was, semen did have a lot of protein...

But she shook off that weakness and defiantly spit what little saliva she had at the Wizard of Oz.

Walsh gave her a smirk - and then punched her in the mouth. Emma felt several teeth dislodge and she sputtered.

Giggling, Jefferson held her mouth shut and sing-songed, "Swallow your medicine, Emma, like a good girl. You can even have some water!"

To her humiliation, she gave in to the promise of water and swallowed her own broken teeth, hardly noticing the metallic tang of blood that slithered down her throat with the tepid liquid.

"Good girl," said Graham. "Maybe you can learn to take orders after all."

"Please," Emma pleaded, "let me go."

The three men just turned and walked away, leaving her starving and bleeding and ultimately finding the only warmth she could in the puddle of her own urine that seeped between her toes.

The next time her captures appeared, they debated removing a finger with Jefferson's cigar cutter.

"Too clean," argued Graham. "Regina would never just cut off a finger."

"Personally, I think Zelena's method is called for," said Walsh, pulling out a knife. "You have to get _them_ to beg you to do it, see. That's how you show you're in charge. It's not the taking of body parts, it's how you do it. Bitch'll never learn if we just lop bits and pieces off."

"What?" Emma uttered, hazy, barely coherent. "What are you-"

And then the knife was slicing at her skin and she cried out.

"It's what you deserve," Graham told her, "for putting a murdering rapists' ring on it. You should feel the pain of all the woman your lover _soiled_ while that ring you coveted hung around his neck."

Oh, she did.

In the ensuing days, Emma was whipped, racked, cut, and violated with various medieval "sex toys" that had belonged to either Regina or Zelena, but none of it compared to the pain of her finger, the flesh left to dry and crack and fester.

"Please, just cut it off!" Emma finally begged.

Walsh obliged, bringing her to blissful unconsciousness.

* * *

 **AN** : Yeah, so poor Emma got a watered-down Theon treatment. Ramsay would have raped her and sent her clit to her family in a box, but that would have been going rather too far in an already over-the-top scene of gruesomeness. I don't think Walsh, Graham, and Jefferson are Ramsay-level assholes, though I don't think any of them are particularly good people. Graham has been martyred to the point of sainthood by most of the fandom (save maybe CSers who think every man save for Killy Poo who's had an interest in Emma is a pedophile rapist), but juxtapose his interest in Emma with Hook's, and he's just a more G-rated version who also stalked and forced himself on her until Emma gave in, blamed herself for his bad behavior, and concluded upon his death that she loved him enough to wear a momento of his doucheyness. Jefferson just seems like a mentally deranged character prone to obsession and physically violent outbursts, but probably not with true malice aforethought; he seems more bipolar or schizophrenic than Joker-like. Walsh is a wild card. We never got to see what kind of a person he really was, other than a huckster who swindled the people of Oz until Zelena found out and transformed him. But considering he could have found some way to escape while in New York but went along with Zelena's plan to manipulate and basically rape Emma for eight months, he's probably either a sociopath himself or was sufficiently brainwashed by Zelena into being her Reek that even given the freedom to escape, he'd still do her bidding and bring an innocent stranger to the slaughter. Anyway, I expect this chapter will unnerve readers and I'll get complaints for going too dark with Emma's punishment. Sorry about that. My muse went there and I couldn't dissuade her. But that's probably the end of the physical torture and we'll back to the emotional evisceration next chapter!

 **Next Up** : Escape from Oz!


	14. Vainglorious

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **A Special Note to OAFK:**

 **First, thank you for not using "Guest" to throw shade at me and my story. I appreciate that courtesy, even if your review shows a complete failure to understand the nuanced point of this story, and in particular Chapter 13. That's okay, the OUAT fandom is now full of uneducated trolls with the mental acuity of thirteen year old fangirls who watch shit TV and if their entertainment medium has any deeper message than two hot actors trying to 69 each other the hard way by shoving their tongues as far down each other's throats as humanly possible and as frequently as possible, then their minds blank like Homer Simpson thought-bubbling a monkey clanging a toy symbol... meaning they fail to take note of all the toxic and abusive shit going down in between the dry-humping. If you are still trying to strain your brain to read this story, then I will explain for your slow-witted-nes that Chapter 13 was meant to shine a spotlight on the sad fact that** _ **Once Upon A Time**_ **is the PG-rated** _ **Game of Thrones**_ **for abusing the shit out of women for the pleasure of male characters whose manpain is the focus of the story arcs rather than the poor lady getting raped or burned at the stake. Also, the rape fetish stuff was inspired by a recent episode of** _ **The Good Wife**_ **, a show I am going to guess you have never watched because it is about actual strong female characters who don't take shit from men and regularly shines the light on social issues that OUAT would rather sweep under their rug of misogyny and "underprivileged" pretty, thin, white, full-hair-headed straight people who suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Sociopathy, and/or Stockholm and Battered Wife Syndrome.**

 **Anyway, in closing, rest assured that my female self will not rape and murder any women, just as I'm sure Adam & Eddy will refrain from mass murdering poor people, shooting their enemies' girlfriends, baby theft, gaslighting their children, and stalking with the purpose of drunk date raping female family members by marriage.**

 **It's fiction you asshat!**

 **(Actually, I'm not sure about gaslighting their kids thing, because, really, isn't that what OUAT is all about? Brainwashing kids into buying Disney DVDs and for some fucked-up reason finding true love with hot bad boy abusive assholes and cheaters?)**

* * *

 **CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

 **VAINGLORIOUS**

The tick-tock of a clock brought Emma slowly back to consciousness. As light and fuzzy shapes began to form in her blurred, abused vision, she took stock of the aches and pains that lingered in her body, a worse state she couldn't recall since giving birth to her son.

It had to be intentional irony then, that when her vision finally cleared and the fog in her head faded enough to think coherently, Emma found herself in a familiar hospital bed with wood paneling and ugly pastel walls and a window with venetian blinds that looked out onto a nurses station with a withering potted ficus that she had spent hours staring at long ago - because that stupid tree was the only _real_ tree she'd seen in nine months considering she was locked up in a desert where the prison yard was just sand with a view of more sand and cactus beyond the fence.

"You made the wrong choice."

The voice startled her gaze from the window.

A chair that wasn't supposed to be was positioned at her beside, and in it sat her son. Not her newborn son, nor a grown up Henry, but the ten year old little boy who'd shown up on her doorstep, right down to his coat and school uniform scarf.

"What?" Emma rasped out.

"You made the wrong choice," Henry repeated with solemnity uncharacteristic even for her son at ten. "Giving me up. And I was wrong when I said you were giving me my best chance, just like your parents were doing for you. Neither one is true."

Emma swallowed thickly and tried to sit up straighter. "W-what do you mean?"

With a shake of his head, Henry leaned forward in the chair and she the _Once Upon a Time_ book was in his lap, but it was now battered, the leather cover scuffed and torn, the glided lettering chipped and pealing, and the pages within crumpled as though with water damage that had swollen and rippled the parchment.

"Snow White and Prince Charming were not iconic heroes, they were just as fucked up as everyone else," Henry answered simply, the vulgarity sounding so wrong from his young mouth. "Only difference is, they thought they were special and perfect. At least you _knew_ you were fucked up. For awhile. But they brainwashed you into thinking you weren't just like they brainwashed me into thinking everyone deserves happy endings. That everyone is fixable. They aren't. You're not. Ignoring all of the bad things, all of the wrong choices, and if you 'give in to love' thinking everything would be great is a lie. Our ending wasn't happy. And you weren't great."

Emma's shoulders sagged and she nodded meekly. "I know. I was far from great, Kid, and I brought about a really shitty ending. I'm so sorry."

"Sorry doesn't change what happened," Henry accused bitterly. "You should have given in to love _here_ not twelve years later by dragging me to Hell to play a bit part in your epic crapfest of a love affair!" he snapped.

"I know," Emma repeated, eyes brimming with tears.

"You should have kept me," continued Henry. "Maybe then you'd have gotten a clue what love actually is instead of getting just the warped, twisted memories of a sociopath who couldn't love me right, who tried to kill you, that I loved because I was a screwed up emotionally abused kid like every other screwed up emotionally abused kid - and you were supposed to save me from that. You were even supposed to save my other mom from herself, get her to take responsibility for destroying our family. But you didn't. You let her and everyone continue to use me, to screw me up more while they screwed you up even more _and then you used me too_. I was a _child_ and you were _a grown-ass adult_ that I trusted, that I found to save me and everyone from all of the bullshit. Instead you just turned a pile of it into a mountain."

"I didn't mean to, Henry. I-"

"You fucked up is what you did!" he shouted, standing. "I followed your example, never holding anyone who hurt me accountable until I thought that was how love works - that no matter how often and how horribly people hurt you, you keep on loving them, you stay with them, you forgive them, you try to make them happy at the expense of your own happiness because you'll be rewarded! But that's _not_ love! That's not _remotely_ how love works! And there is no reward. And I went my whole fucking life never understanding that _because of you_!"

Emma swallowed thickly while fighting back tears. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Henry. I know that I failed you. I wasn't a good mom. I was an awful savior. I messed up everything over and over until it all just blew up. But I really did want to be a hero when I started Operation Cobra. I really did want to be the mom you deserved, Kid. I just... I got lost along the way, and the harder I tried to get back, the more lost I got instead -"

"And asked all the wrong people for directions," said Henry coolly.

"I... guess I did," Emma conceded and her son shook his head and looked at her with such utter disappointment. It was the look she'd been so terrified of that day of the debate against Sydney Glass, the one she'd briefly glimpsed when Henry found out she'd used Violet to free Merlin and then as part of her plot to keep Hook from finding out he was the Dark One. Then, her shame was tempered by the Darkness. Now it had nothing to smother it and she wished she could go back to that dungeon in Oz, because the physical torment hurt less than the shame that burned in her heart at son's disappointment and disgust.

"You were supposed to be my hero," Henry continued, driving the knife of nostalgia in. "You were supposed to be my _mom_ who looked out for me, who protected me. Instead I always had save everyone. I always had to be the voice of reason, and if that didn't work, the shoulder to cry on or the wingman - anything but the pissed off kid I was entitled to be, a kid who'd been kidnapped and abused by his grandfather and didn't even get to say good-bye to his dad before he died. Who shouldn't have had to be okay with one of his mothers jumping into bed with his asshole step grandfather and his other being willing to write him out of her story entirely to have a do-over with the adulterous dolt who so didn't care she'd killed his wife that he banged her right next to what they both thought was her frozen comatose self."

Henry waved the battered book as the volume of his voice increased, "Do you have any idea how much that messed me up!? I _never_ got to be a kid, Emma! For fuck's sake, I barely even went to _school_! If I'd had to make a living in the Land Without Magic, outside of Storybrooke, I'd have been a thief or a bum for all of the education I actually got while my selfish prick family either dragged me along on stupid romance field trips or didn't have the sense to tell me 'no' when I was being an arrogant thirteen-year-old kid! I didn't even graduate junior fucking high! That's worse than you _and_ Dad!

"What happened to parents wanting better for their kids, huh _? Castles and chivalry and being an uneducated idiot knight who saves dumb damsels from dragons is not better!_ " he shouted, slamming the book down an instrument tray and scattering the contents with a loud clatter.

"I thought you always wanted to go back to the Enchanted Forest," Emma squeaked out.

"I was a dumb kid, Emma," Henry snapped at her, the use of her name instead of 'mom' stinging immensely. "It was your job to give me my best chance. I had _potential,_ I had talents that were _useless_ in that world so _how_ could I truly ever be happy?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Emma asked, shocked, confused, and dismayed that her son had been unhappy. She'd never suspected such a thing!

"Because it was never an option," Henry accused. "I was so fucking indoctrinated into the family bullshit about 'happily ever after' that I didn't even question it until it was too late. I didn't care that Regina made everything about her and used me like a pawn to rewrite her story. I didn't let myself feel slighted that everything was always about _your_ happy ending after you became the Dark One. That you stopped paying attention to anyone else and their problems, including _me_. I had to be the good little prince, the self-sacrificing hero like the ones I idolized, the ones who never actually existed, because everyone I thought was a great hero when I was ten turned out to be legendary assholes instead."

"I-"

"Don't say you're sorry," Henry growled, pointing angrily. "I don't fucking _care_ if you're sorry. I care that you know what you did, that you know you destroyed _my_ happy ending, Emma. From the moment you got your real memories back, you stopped caring about my happiness. You made everything about what you wanted, whether it was to stay in New York and avoid the complicated mess of your family or to stay and complicate it even more to get your rocks off, to compensate for your fear of ending up alone and unloved by loving a psychopath stalker who was too obsessed with you to ever leave you short of death - death you had to reverse to keep your safety net.

"You weren't giving in to love," scoffed Henry. "You were giving in to fear, same as always. That's all you are. Pan was right about that. You're a scared little orphan girl - who brought me into this world by being careless and selfish. And you took me out of it doing the same."

"Henry," Emma cried, "please, let me explain. I didn't have my soul-"

"I know," he cut her off. "You created a monster. You replaced yourself with it. A monster who wasn't otherwise all that different from the whole you, just more selfish and impulsive, all the bad things that you were exaggerated a bit more. You were different, but not that much. Not that much more than anyone else in this family who finally stopped pretending they were good and stunk up Storybrooke airing out their dirty laundry.

"Even I became a jerk - and a chump," said Henry, raking a hand through his hair in a gesture that was both too adult for his 'age' and so like his father.

"I extorted my own grandfather, played on his grief at losing my dad to spy on him, to snoop around his shop for anything Regina could use to selfishly erase my life and write her new life with Robin," he scoffed. "How _fucked up_ is that, huh? And did you even notice? You were too busy going on creepy dates, abusing prisoners, and forcing me to spend time with a man I hated, who told me lies about my father to paint himself as the hero in their story, who blamed Baelfire for getting taken by Pan, for not being grateful for his generosity at taking him in after he showed up Neverland - for being pissed that he wanted to avenge the death of a woman who left him to the mercy of fucking genocide - to even notice what I mess I was. You were too busy making evil dreamcatchers and masturbating in your creepy-ass Dark One fuckpad about a man who murdered his father and orphaned his brother to care that I missed my dad. That I was growing up with utter shit for role models.

"I mean, Jesus, my one grandfather was irredeemably evil every six weeks for no fucking reason. My dick grandfather nearly let me kill pedestrians with his stupid truck to prove he was cooler than your boyfriend who taught me how to cheat at gambling and got me to teach him how to use a cellphone to take upskirt pictures of barely legal girls _including my girlfriend_ And Robin, what the hell could I learn from him?

"Same as you, I guess," Henry accused. "that as soon as the body of your true love is cold, that love is over and done and was never important to begin with, that person no longer worth remembering or honoring because they were just a place-holder and genetic contribution to the next generation assigned to your life story on the road to finding your soulmate and giving them a step kid to screw up like every other stupid bullshit fairy tale story that cares more about evil stepparents than the good ones who died just so they could fuck up another family!"

Henry waved his arms as he spoke, "And the only person I had to talk to about _any_ of that was Violet, and you messed that up too! She the first friend I ever had in Storybrooke, but after what you did, that was tainted, tied to all these things about my dad that were supposed to be good, but you destroyed them, used them as bait _to save a jerk you had been dating for two months_. To cover up what a selfish bitch you were. And what did I do? I fucking _forgave you_. I helped that bastard find a place to _shack up with you_ where he could take even more of your attention away from me, I helped you find him and give him half your heart so you could share even less with me until it was like I was just neighborhood kid who came by sometimes, who got replaced by a new kid you loved more-"

"That's not true!" Emma shouted. "I didn't love her more."

"You _did_ ," Henry countered. "You shared your heart with _him_ and you shared _her_ with him, so by the laws of magic, _you loved her more than me_ , the reminder of the man you still blamed for destroying your first chance at happiness, that you told yourself you never loved as much, because you and Hook were destined and Dad was just a mistake that happened because the Curse screwed up how things were meant to go, like Marian was never meant to be with Robin if Regina had met him that day in that tavern. So I was a mistake, an aberration, a reminder of your life gone to shit, and when it got back on track and your heart was with your real true love and the life that created, there was no place for me in it."

"No!" Emma pleaded in tears. "That was a mistake. All of it! There was always a place for you, Henry. _You_ were my first love - and my last love. My only _true_ love. I'm sorry if I couldn't love you enough. I didn't know I'd lose my love for you. If I'd known, I wouldn't have done it, you _have_ to believe me!

"You saved me, Henry," she cried. "I know I failed you and your dad. I tried to make some perfect fairy tale parallel to your grandparents so I wouldn't have to face that I screwed up, that I let the happy ending I was supposed to have, the love _that made you_ die because of this stupid, useless old anger for something that I _knew_ wasn't even is fault, but those old habits were hard to shake. I thought... I thought if I finally shook them, if I found a way to be happy then I was keeping my promise to Neal to make sure we were both happy together, even if it hurt that I wasn't able to do that for him."

"Yeah," scoffed Henry, "it hurt so much you turned into a selfish, narcissistic bitch who gave me hypocritical advice never to change myself to get anyone's love as you were doing exactly that. Actions speak louder than words. I followed your _actions_. I ended up _betrayed_. I raised that _fucking sociopath's spawn_ and you died for her, not because she was family or because you were the Savior, but because Hook made the mistake that put her life in danger and all you ever did was clean up his messes using us as your mops - just like you dragged us all to Hell for him. And that's one _shitty_ attempt at keeping a promise."

"You're right, it's really shitty," Emma agreed. "I'm sorry you weren't happy, Henry. I'm sorry you based your love on a lie because I was too afraid to be alone, too afraid to face my shame and grief over your dad. That wasn't fair to you."

"No, it wasn't," Henry stated. "And I don't care if you're sorry. Sorry won't bring my father back. Sorry won't give me a do-over at all of the hopes and dreams I scarified to get my selfish family back to their world. Sorry won't get either of my mothers back as the people I used to think they could be. It doesn't get me anything. I'm still alone, same as I started out. Different and 'special' because I was born on the other side, without magic, without a story of my own. Other people die and they get to hope that at least they've got family in Heaven, that they'll get to see all those people again. But I don't get that. That's what being your son gets me. And this time you don't get to come with me - and the truth is, I wouldn't want you with me even if you could."

"I didn't know," Emma cried. "I don't want you to be alone, Henry. I never wanted you to be alone..."

"I was always alone! My whole life I was alone! I could never keep any friends because of my family! And none of you really cared about me, because I was different, because I was never really one of you! I was born in the wrong world and the wrong time so I was never going to fit in and I could never escape that stigma any more than I could being a bastard in a world _where that mattered_!" shouted Henry.

"I didn't fit in either," Emma tried to argue. "I didn't fit in here, but I didn't fit in there either."

"Really? You did a crap job of showing that," scoffed Henry. "And even if that's true, it's back to being all about you. You were too busy trying to make yourself fit in to notice that I was struggling, that no one respected a kid who just wanted to tell stories. So, of course, how could any woman from that world have _really_ loved me? I was a fool. Just like my dad was a fool to turn that key to try and get back to us. The father I knew, even if it wasn't for very long, would never have made that impulsive move. Just like the mother I brought to Storybrooke would never have turned a man she barely knew into the Dark One to save him from a death he deserved. Love doesn't work like that.

"You were both better than that -until you weren't, until all you cared about was your happiness and I was just an afterthought. But that's how love works in your world, right? Getting your rocks off comes first, ensuring your kids are happy is so distantly behind that you'd need the spyglass Hook used to stalk you to see it. It's ingrained in your literary DNA not to give a shit about your kids. Growing up in this world without parents was supposed to be some nurture over nature crap, give you that... basic altruism that real people have, but you threw it away at the first chance you got to get laid!

"You're not a good person and you're a _terrible_ mother," Henry hissed before Emma could even mount a response. "You should have left Storybrooke and never come back. Or better yet, I never should have found you at all. We'd all have been off under the Curse than 'saved' by you. I'd have grow up, I'd have been able to leave and have an actual life, maybe even found my father who'd still be alive too and was a _much_ better person than you."

"I know he was," Emma whispered, bowing her head. "I always knew he was..."

"Then why did you treat his memory like shit?" Henry demanded. "My dad _loved_ you. He gave up his happiness for you. He gave up his _life_ for you. And how did you repay his love? His sacrifice? You could barely even forgive him while you showered endless forgiveness on a man who repeatedly tried to kill you and _me_ , who never truly cared about anything but himself. You ruined your song _for me_. You turned that dreamcatcher, the only thing I had of his, into a nightmare I could never escape, into a reminder of sick and twisted bad memories that boiled down to you never choosing him. _Never choosing me_."

"I didn't... my soul wasn't-"

" _Bullshit!_ " Henry shouted. "I don't want to hear anymore about your soul, Emma! Soul or no soul, my father deserved better than a pirate's whore! Than a lover with such little self-respect she changed herself into _his mother_ to fuck his step father. _You're just like Milah_. You took something good and you hated it, you destroyed it for flattery and adventure. For an ever-ready cock with a pretty face that turned you into selfish bitch who fucked everything up and everyone over.

"That's what you are," Henry told her coldly. "Everything you thought about yourself before you knew the truth was right: you're a loser that no good person could want who would never amounted to anything but a complete and utter failure. So here you are, exactly what you feared was true, where you could have changed that, where you could have become someone good who'd have done great things - but instead you chose yourself. For the first time, you chose yourself and you said you were choosing me, but you weren't. This, right here, is where you planted that selfish seed that grew to fill the void of potential darkness your parents deprived you of - and that was worse, because it was _real_ not just a hypothetical."

Shoving his hands into his pockets and tipped his head to the side, Henry amended, "But the thing is, you're not really real. Not anymore. You're just a worthless failure who won't be remembered by anyone, because unlike all of the other characters in that book, you're just a baby on some pages that got ripped out and a faceless nobody dancing with a pervert. You're nothing. And you will be stuck here forever as nothing."

Henry stepped back from Emma, nothing but disgust in his hazel eyes, and turned toward the door.

"Henry, please!" Emma cried out, trying to follow, but found her ankle was cuffed to the bed. "I love you! Don't go _! I love you!_ "

She tugged at it as the door clicked shut, but then futility set in and she broke down, just as she had all those years ago in this room.

"I love you," she wept. "I'm sorry. I wanted to be a good mom. I wanted to make the right choice. I wanted you to be happy..."

Emma sobbed until she had no tears left, no strength to even lift her head from the pillows, and finally curled up like that pathetic diseased Flying Monkey and wished for death that wouldn't come because she was dead already. Her son hated her. _Her son hated her because she'd ruined his life. She'd killed him!_

She'd promised Neal she would make sure their son had what neither of them did, that he didn't grow up like they did - but he grew up exactly like they did _because of her_.

 _"Tallahassee, baby, we're almost home,"_ Neal's voice echoed in her head, looping over and over.

Tallahassee didn't exist anymore.

She'd been so close to being everything she'd wanted, everything she was supposed to be, but somehow it all went wrong, and everyone and no one - and mostly she was to blame, it seemed.

She _should_ _have_ kept her son.

She _should_ _have_ taken him back to New York.

She _should_ _have_ stayed away from that barn.

She _should have_ let Hook die.

Instead she did the opposite and told herself those were the right choices, but they were really just the selfish ones, the ones that would forever keep her from finding peace, from having the one thing she and Neal had both so desperately wanted.

"Home," Emma whispered longingly - and if this was a story about happy endings, she would have miraculously woken up in the passenger seat of the Bug on the way to Canada and it would have all be a crazy fever dream.

But this wasn't.

"Home is where the heart is," her own voice uttered, only it didn't come from her lips or inside her head.

Leaning against the door where the corrections officer had once stood was the Dark Swan, all scaly leather and weirdly flocked hair.

"Which," the Dark Swan said, "means half of yours is _definitely_ in Hell. Only question is, where's the half you kept gonna end up?"

Emma sniffed and asked, confused - on two levels since she was essentially talking to herself, "I thought there was no Heaven or Hell for... fairy tale people?"

"Nope, just no Heaven. Satan is a lot let choosy. Besides, fairy talers make the most amusing cliché villains who always think they're victims."

"How do you even know about Hell? If you're me!?"

"I'm the answers to the questions you haven't even learned how to ask, Emma. I'm the you who wasn't constrained by social constructs like morality."

"Pride," Emma wheezed out and the darker her grinned.

"Bingo. I'm the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: the source of the others." Pride Emma declared. "I'm the you that wasn't bothered with the problems of others, because I know that I'm better than they are. Why bother acknowledging their accomplishments when it would be up to me to save them in the end? I am hubris. I am _vainglorious_. I am what you became, the desperation to be good enough, to be a hero, perverting that belief in yourself, that love of yourself into hatred and contempt for others.

"I am the deadliest of all the sins that leads directly to the damnation," the dark woman bragged. "After all, it was pride that caused Lucifer's fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. It was _yours_ that caused your fall down that that portal and away from ever finding... what was it you called your happy ending? Oh, right: _Tallahassee_. Fitting that it's really a swamp nowhere near the ocean."

The Dark Swan smirked as she mused, "You were really into that dream, weren't you? Pathetic. You had so much potential, but you gave it up _for_ _love_ to steal those stolen watches for a prospect-less loser, and what did it get you?" She scoffed. "Then you threw even more potential away to split your heart for a creep. And, look, you're right back in the same place.

"I'm the _only thing_ that kept you and that fucked up world functional as long as it was," the Dark Swan continued in her weird monotone while leaning forward on the side rail of the hospital bed, invading Emma's personal space.

"Without me," she intoned, "your soulless self would have been the Dark One's plaything. And better a pathetic excuse for a Dark One than completely consumed by and turned into the puppet of an immortal evil. Sadly, while I was battling the Darkness, Lust was putting it all out there like a horny baboon flashing her flaming red ass - and then we were all on our way to the U-"

A gurgling sound interrupted the Dark Swan's monologue and brows furrowing she looked down at the scalpel driven into her chest.

Emma stared defiantly at her alter ego... or... well... her _Ego_ she supposed. "I don't need you," she stated, driving the blade in deeper with her bandaged hand.

The Dark Swan gave one more gasp and then vaporized in a cloud of ash.

Scooting to the end of the bed, Emma used the slender knife to pick at the lock on the cuffs. It was all about the tumblers...

When she heard the telltale _snick,_ she pulled the shackle free of her chaffed ankle and limped to the door, pulling it open-

Not to the hallway lined with exam rooms, but the dismal grounds of a carnival closed up after hours.

Emma turned in a circle, finding any evidence of the door she'd walked through gone, just chilly air. That dreamscape or whatever it was had been replaced by the dark shapes of booths and rides, the antiseptic smell of the delivery room now instead stale popcorn and overfilled porta-potties.

And there was music.

The tiny strains of a high-pitched, twangy woman's voice echoed off the boarded up game booths and food stalls, adding to the eerie feeling.

 _Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory_

 _And I ain't saying it ain't a fact_

 _But I've heard that I'm on the road to Purgatory_

 _And I don't like the sound of that_

 _I believe in love and I live my life accordingly_

 _But I choose to let the mystery be_

The wet blacktop was cold against her feet and Emma shivered in her hospital gown, wrapping her arms around her torso as she moved cautiously, unsure of what she would find here - until the massive silhouette of the Italian Trapeze came into view.

Emma's heart stilled once more at the site of a figure in an old coat and a hoodie, hunched forward in one of the swings. Her feet felt glued to the pavement as her voice struggled to work, finally croaking out a breathy, "Neal?"

* * *

AN: Cliffie! If you're not aware, that song lyric is from "Let the Mystery Be" by Iris De Ment, and is the opening theme music for _The Leftovers Season 2_ , a show I have not seen yet, but I hear is really great! I'll give a shoutout to anyone who knows what show inspired the line "I'm the answers to the questions you haven't even learned how to ask".

Next Up: A conversation about dead people.


	15. The Saviors Lament

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **A Special Note to OAFK: I just want to kiss** **you and love you and squeeze you and call you 'George'.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER FIFTEEN**

 **THE SAVIORS LAMENT**

The figure pulled his hood back and looked mildly chagrined as he told her, "Sorry to disappoint."

" _You_ ," Emma grumbled, glowering at the Angel and slumped into the opposite swing. "Neal really doesn't want to see me, does he?"

"That's not my place to say," Metatron answered, folding his hands between his knees.

"I miss him," Emma sighed, picking at the bandage on her ruined hand. "I just want him to know how sorry I am. I failed everyone. Even _my son_ hates me."

"That's not true, Emma. He's... _disappointed_. He hung the moon and stars on you, never could knock down that superhero pedestal he put you on because of the story in that book - until you knocked it down yourself," explained the moody Angel. "People immerse themselves so deeply in denial, in falsehoods of the people they love that when the truth is finally forced on them, it's only natural to get angry. But he's more angry with himself for clinging to the unrealistic concepts of a child, for enabling you and the rest of your family under a desperate hope that the 'happily ever after' lie was still achievable, that somehow the piling up bullshit would just magically disappear and those who had wronged him and his family would finally face punishment while his own happy ending would be waiting."

Metatron leaned back and explained, "No matter what he told all of you as a child in his desperate longing for a family - one that wasn't trying to kill one another - Henry wanted to believe that bad people eventually get what's coming to them, their lies revealed and their usurped happiness destroyed to mitigate justice for their victims. Good always winning over Evil, just as he told you as a little boy who believed with his whole heart that you could be the Hope that vanquished that cruelty. He also believed that if you sacrifice your own happiness long enough for the happiness of others, in the end God or karma or the laws of the universe - or _magic_ \- rewards heroes for their sacrifices. Or if you're a villain and you show remorse for you actions and spend every day thereafter working to show you're reformed through helping the people you hurt and good deeds to prevent others from taking the same dark path - _then_ you have a shot at being a hero and having a happy ending. He wanted to believe that people change for the better and that it's acts of contrition for wrong actions that bring happy endings to all."

"But it doesn't," sighed Emma. "It's just random, unfair bullshit. You can sacrifice your entire life and die, forgotten, your happy ending given to the assholes who wronged you and did nothing to deserve all the rewards."

"Sadly," confirmed Metatron. "People are who they are, and though they grow and are shaped by their experiences and the people they love and hate, at their core, they are the virtues and vices imprinted on them even before birth, and once they give in to the latter, changing back... it's not easy, and it's more often impossible - because there is no karma waiting to smack them down, because sometimes people are prone toward being selfish no matter how much they love another, no matter much they are loved. It's particularly hard for your kind, so many of you type cast into roles that exaggerate qualities, good or bad.

"And God doesn't answer the prayers of every schmuck on his knees begging for forgiveness and twenty grand," Metatron amended with a scoff. "Everyone wants to believe that God is listening, but why should God bother fixing the problems you people got yourselves into? Why should God be selfless and giving when you're selfish and take _take take_. God tried that once, and how did _that_ work out? _The Crusades_ is how it worked out followed by a second wave of revenge for said Crusades, all in His name. Oh, sure, both sides can agree that Jesus was a great, loving, and selfless man who turned the other cheek, but follow his example over telling everyone else in the world how to live their lives? _God_ no."

Metatron shook his head and draped an arm over the back of his chair as he continued, "What your son and so many refuse to acknowledge in life is that people live their lives, they make their choices, and they pay the price for that by the choices of _others_. Waiting for the hand of Justice to balance the scales, to damn some deadbeat being given a free ride, is naive. But it's also _comforting_. Whether it's religious dogma or the happy ending magic of fairy tales, it doesn't matter. It means there's a design, a plan, that everything bad that happens has a reason behind it, even if it's unknowable and that every good thing is a reward, even if you have no idea what you did to deserve it."

Emma bowed her head. "I should have told Henry that. I shouldn't have... have gotten so caught up in the idea of everyone getting a happy ending. But it just... it was such a simple and... _easy_ thing, that no matter what I did, I deserved a happy ending. If mass murderers and rapists deserved a happy ending, if I was supposed to save them, then I had to deserve one, even though I never felt like I did after giving Henry up."

"Of course you wanted to believe that," said Metatron. "You think Christ thought it was fair he didn't get a happy ending? He had to die for murderers and rapists, he had to abandon his family to whatever retribution there would be for his message of peace, because that's what his being a Savior meant. That's the story God wrote for him, the part he had to play with very little say in the matter.

"And when it was done," the Angel continued, "do you think he looked at the centuries that followed and thought 'well, that was worth it, job well done!' when his message was corrupted by greedy men who pulled the world in the Dark Ages? God has Her reasons for everything, but Her own son wasn't in the know for all of it. Even he's left with a guilty conscience over the consequences he couldn't foresee, the people he trusted would take his message to heart and be saved who instead betrayed him and others for their selfish gains. But you know what? He would do it all again if he was asked. He would give up everything he loved to save everyone he loved."

Frowning, Emma uttered, "Yeah, well, I'm no messiah. That's what Death said, right? I'm just a screw-up who got an impossible task because my parents' story was a convenient spot to start. And even when I told myself I was giving up everything for everyone, it was a lie.

"I mean, look at Henry? I told myself I was protecting him. But the truth is, I was protecting myself. I just couldn't take it anymore," she sniffed. "I couldn't take any more disappointments. I couldn't take loving someone again and losing them or their love. And I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I could be his mom and love him enough, the way he deserved, when I spent all those months with him growing inside of me thinking of him as the consequence of all the bad choices I made and all the people who threw me away. I know that isn't true now. I know he was a gift, the best thing to happen to me that I never appreciated enough, because I was afraid to love him that much - and then, I guess, because I was incapable of it without a soul and half my heart given to another and Regina's messed up sociopath mom memories. But that's how I felt then - and how could I tell him that?"

"You couldn't. Not then," Metatron conceded, "but Henry did grow up. He would have understood."

"I didn't want him to see me as the... the damaged person I am," Emma cried. "I wanted to always be that hero who stood up to the Evil Mayor. It's pretty messed up irony that she probably ended up the better mother, the more well-adjusted person."

"Well, she _did_ have a soul, rudimentary and corrupted as it was, and a whole heart, blackened as _it_ was," the Angel pointed out.

"I have my whole heart and my soul now, but I don't feel any different," admitted Emma while wiping at her eyes. "Henry was right. I am a failure and a loser. God never should have put any faith in me. I know I don't deserve a happy ending. I just... everyone else shouldn't be punished because I failed. All those good people, the innocent ones or the ones who really are sorry, they should get a chance to go to Heaven. They deserve to be _real_.

"And I don't want Henry to be alone," Emma worried. "He should have his father with him. All of that stuff with Neal using dark magic, it was such bullshit that shouldn't keep him here. He never would have really done that, not if he'd been in control of his story, not if I hadn't already started screwing things up. Neal hated dark magic and he just wanted to have a family. He didn't want Henry to lose his father like he did. But no one would listen," Emma angrily lamented.

"How could my parents turn their backs on him, but serve me up like a prize to a man who repeatedly allied with murderers and tried to kill us?" she asked. "How could they want me to 'honor' their own love and sacrifices by splitting my heart for _that_ , something so... repulsively opposite to their love?"

"Because parents make stupid choices," Metatron said with a roll of his eyes as though it was obvious. "They want their children to be happy. They want their children's love. Sometimes the fear of losing the latter leads them to enable a happiness that's self-destructive. Just as children often put up with a lifetime of emotional neglect and being the runner up to jobs and lovers, because some affection is better than none.

"I'd wager that you're parents put up with a great deal they didn't truly support because they thought it made you happy - and you perused things, clung to choices and people that brought only a fleeting distraction and ultimately disappointed, because you didn't want to disappoint them," he postulated. "You didn't want to keep failing and losing at love, to constantly hear about their perfect romance and always fall short, particularly after you had entwined your love story with theirs in a way that could not easily be unwritten - so you contrived something, made yourself believe it could be as perfect, that a dark spell could lead to something fated, even when deep down you knew it was a lie, and you were just giving in to fear."

Emma laughed miserably. "So it was all a lot of misunderstandings? Neither of us was happy with my choices?"

"That's often how life works," Metatron told her. "A long series of misunderstandings that are only straightened out when it's too late to change things. Life isn't like _Sliding Doors_. Universe destruction aside, you can't go back to the past and make the other choice you realized years later was the right one. All you're left with is regret and trying to pick up the pieces."

"That's a shitty pep-talk."

"I'm an Angel not a motivational speaker!" the Angel huffed. "But in the interest of making you feel better, nothing is beyond salvation."

"Really? Because I just destroyed a universe!" Emma pointed out.

"That universe was essentially _not real_ ," Metatron countered. "Anything not sanctioned by God is blasphemy. But the universe that came before, the one whose destruction brought it into being, _that one_ is not without hope."

"But... it's _destroyed_ ," Emma stated. "That's what you said. The one I caused replaced it. That's what threw everything into chaos. I destroyed our _real_ stories. They got replaced with some... some crazy ass fanfiction version of them, and they weren't even great stories to begin with! I essentially made the _Fifty Shades of Gray_ to God's _Twilight!_ And I don't know what's salvageable about either of those!"

"And here I thought you'd be into vampires and bondage," the Angel quipped, earning a glare.

"Saviors, never a sense of humor!" he complained and Emma harrumphed.

"You think it's the first time a universe has been accidentally poofed out of existence?" Metatron stated. "Thankfully, God keeps a back-up copy in case the mortal hard drive crashes thanks to the malware of humanity. It _can_ be rebooted if there's reason to believe it's not corrupted beyond repair. Which, of course, generally requires assigning some prophet or _savior_ the task of fixing everything that caused it to go to shit. Now, usually, that isn't the same person who hit the 'self-destruct' button, but seeing as you are available..."

"I'm _dead_ ," said Emma, confused. "Dead is dead."

"Dead in the real world is dead unless it isn't," scoffed Metatron, "which was ninety-nine percent of the time with you people, yet Henry was the only one who ever questioned the nonsensical hypocrisy of those magical laws. And this is not _magic_ we're talking about. This is _God_.

"Lazarus was dead. Never mind Jesus. Though, you're right that comparing you to Christ would _definitely_ be blasphemy," the Angel mused to which Emma snorted. "Still, you were meant to be a prophet to your people before that got screwed up. This is your chance to do what you were _meant_ to do. You just have to undo all of the stuff you _weren't_ meant to do before you can do that. Like world destruction."

"How... how would I even do that?"

"Well, on the last one, stop the time portal. As for the rest of it, who do I look like, Yoda? You're the prophet, you figure it out."

Shaking her head, Emma remarked, "I don't know if I can do this. It's a lot of pressure. What if I fail?"

"Then nothing changes. It can't be worse than destroying two universes, Emma. The other option? You stay here, you keep battling the demons of your failures, and maybe, eventually, you succeed and you get to see your son again and earn his forgiveness, but everyone else...? They're fighting their own battles, for their own souls, and they're at a disadvantage.

"You can save them, Emma," Metatron told her. "And in the process, you can redeem yourself."

Emma swallowed thickly. She was afraid. But she didn't want everyone to suffer in this torment because she was scared.

"Everyone will go back to... to being alive? To before any of this happened?"

"The ones that were alive at the time. The rest... well... they'll still be here counting on you. Just maybe no longer hating you and rooting against you for letting them down."

Brushing at her tears, Emma considered that maybe, just maybe then Neal would still be rooting for her too.

She reached up with her bandaged hand and clutched at the keychain at her throat.

"Okay," she agreed. "I'll do it."

The sky was starting to grow light, and Emma felt something pulling at her soul, an unstoppable force.

"What should I-"

Before she could finish her question, there came a violent force propelling her away in flash of brilliant light as she thought she heard the Angel of Death shouting from within the void, "This time don't fuck it up, girl!"

* * *

AN: In retrospect, I shouldn't have had Metatron appear until now. Oh, well. That's what happens when you write the _Once Upon a Time_ chapter-by-chapter way! The quote from the last chapter was inspired by "A dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask" said by Scully to Mulder in _The X-Files_ episode "Paper Heart". That line always stuck with me.

Next Up: We kick off Part II in which Emma returns to the restored Original Universe/Timeline... which still isn't _our_ universe, but don't get me started on Adam  & Eddy being fucking oblivious to how the International Dateline _and_ time zones work!

 **Story Progress Report: Some have worried this story is coming to a close, but don't fear, it's only Part I that's ending here. I already have the first six chapters of Part II written and just need to edit, so updates will probably be every weekend in January while I try to work on writing more chapters. Part II probably won't be as long as Part I, though it depends where my muse takes me and whether or not I want to wrap this story up and attempt a sequel to "Heroes Are Stupid, Villains Are Attractive" or write something new.  
**


	16. The Fringe Effect

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **I don't know why reviews for Chapter 15 have yet to post. I sent an email to support.  
**

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 **A Note to Mir: Thank you for your loyal reviews. I wish you had an account so we could PM. Metatron is from Dogma, a movie you can actually watch in-full on YouTube if that hasn't deleted for copyright violation. I'm a bit sad to leave PART I behind as well, but while I have enjoyed using the Kitsowitz/Espenson model and taking it to their George R.R. Martin _Game of Thrones_ bad feminist/misogynist worldview worshiping extreme that would be OUAT if it was on HBO, all satirical torture porn must come to an end. In PART II, hopefully, Emma can be un-Reeked and realize without need of ghosts and angels that romance is NOT swooning over raging psychopaths and instantly absolution of present-day atrocities through horny-teenager make-out session.**

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 **A Note to All Readers: PART II is turning out to be more in the way of absurd humor over the dark gallows humor of PART I. The chapters will likely be shorter and broken into sections focused on different characters and how their "Season 4" lives get off to a slightly different start thanks to Emma having different priorities and Zelena being... well... I rather enjoyed Chapter Two! Anyway, I hope you enjoy PART TWO!**

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 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER ONE**

 **THE FRINGE EFFECT**

Emma hit the ground with a painful _thud_ , her head dizzy and her senses slowly acclimating to twilight in an overcast sky and the smell of hay, body-order-soaked leather, and cheap rum.

It took a moment longer than it should have to realize she was at the barn that day and the time portal had opened up, blown out the barn doors, and landed her on her ass... because the portal was sucking her toward it with alarming speed.

Fighting the fear of the consequences of failure, Emma threw her hands outward toward a length of rope that shot magically into her hand and coiled around her wrist. For a few panicked seconds she thought it wasn't fast enough and the rope too long as she was dragged like a stunt man behind a horse in an old western.

Thankfully, the rope pulled taught just shy of the golden light which had reversed in on itself turning the column into a deepening portal.

Emma craned her neck, looking into the portal with an unsettling sensation of deja vu. The memory of her death was fresh in her mind, the momentary fear of the unknown, expecting to be pulled into the past followed momentarily by an agonizing pain as though she'd fallen into a blackhole and gravity was ripping her apart to a molecular level -which, in a way, it was, splitting her, killing her while leaving a copy whose memories were now a part of her like some parasitic twin she could never be rid of.

That in and of itself was incentive enough to get her wits about her and channel her magic at the portal. Emma poured it out of her finger tips - hardly having time to notice and feel relief that she once more had _all_ of her fingers - forcing more and more, every last drop, until she could feel the magic unbinding from her blood and the world starting to grow fuzzy at the edges of her vision.

Just when Emma feared she would pass out, the portal slammed shut with a shockwave that shattered what remained of the barn and shredded the rope.

Wind knocked out of her, head spinning once more, Emma lay in a thicket of weeds waiting for the tingling in her hands to stop and the blood in her ears to stop pounding. She was sure that she'd twisted her wrist rather badly and her back was going to be black and blue in the morning.

But she'd succeeded!

She was alive and the universe hadn't ended!

Before Emma could quite come to her senses, a voice was bellowing through the roaring, "SWAN! SWAN!"

 _Right, Hook_. _Ugh_.

She'd managed blissfully to forget her pervy great grandfather had tagged along to the barn... and everything her "clone" had done with future/alternate reality Hook... but also what she and that perv actually had done in Neverland and certain lascivious thoughts she'd had about him in the weeks (minus a year without memories) afterward that now made her want to vomit.

And then rum-flavored lips were pressed against hers making it _way way_ worse!

Emma rose up fast enough to knock her forehead against his. She gave him an extra shove and snapped, "What the hell was that!?"

"I wasn't certain you were breathing."

"That's not how CPR works!" she hissed.

"It worked just fine the other day when you were reviving me right over there," Hook pointed to the water trough.

"Yeah, and stealing my magic!" Emma reminded. "Why the hell did I think taking you with me then _or_ now made any damn sense? Do you know what kind of mess there would have been if you'd fallen in that portal!?" she huffed, refusing his hand as help to her feet.

Hook gave her a petulant look. "Well, I didn't. Never thought I'd be grateful for this," he said of his prosthetic, then raised a brow.

"That was quick thinking with the rope, luv. And quite a show you put on dispatching of that portal, particularly since I thought you'd lost your magic?"

"Yeah, well, Zelena took it as part of her spell to open that damned thing, so I guess she figured she could jump into the portal before I'd get here to stop her."

Hook nodded, contemplated a moment, then deduced, "Well, you're still here, so... I suppose that means you did, unless she was lying about intending to wipe your family out of existence."

"Yeah, I guess so," Emma agreed with a relieved sigh as sirens cut through the evening.

Hook smiled, pulling out his flask. "A drink to celebrate, Swan?"

Rolling her eyes, Emma shoved his arm away and started walking toward the approaching squad car, ignoring her throbbing wrist and aching back. "I'm giving up day-drinking."

"It's technically evening, Swan. Perfectly acceptable cocktail time."

"Fine, then, I'm giving up drinking _with you_ ," she groused. "Who knows what diseases I've gotten from your backwash, never mind mouth-to-mouth contact. Actually, scratch that. I probably already caught syphilis from you in Neverland. You're not touching me until the only thing I'm drunk on his penicillin, and even then I wouldn't try it."

Frowning Hook hurried beside her, remarking, "Now you're just being intentionally contrary again, Swan! In Neverland you led me on and then rebuffed me, then you began flirting with me rather shamelessly when we returned to Storybrooke. You seemed quite pleased that I would think of you every day... then kneed me in the family jewels upon our reunion - though, to be fair, you didn't have your memories. But as soon as you recovered them, you can't deny that you've been receptive to my affections. After all, was your declaration after reuniting Ariel and Eric not meant as encouragement to peruse you? Until you decided to run back to New York, I thought we had reached a certain simpatico..."

"I am not running back to New York," sighed Emma, part of her wishing now that she was. Fairy tales. Ugh.

"So you're staying?" Hook asked, hopeful.

"For my parents and my son and this town of people I'm supposed to help get their happy endings. _Not for you_ ," Emma pressed, "a man who spent three centuries date raping bar maids after leaving my son's father to rot in a jungle wasteland, tormented by a child-abusing sociopath, simply because he wasn't cool with you having fucked his mom for seven years."

Hook startled and grimaced. "Ah... so... Neal did tell you about our... familial connection then."

"No, he didn't actually," Emma retorted. "I guess he didn't think he had any right to interfere with my love life, though in that case, he _really_ should have. Also, I am going to punch Regina in the tits for not mentioning that you murdered your own father and orphaned your own brother. I don't date orphan-makers."

Looking particularly traumatized, Hook pleaded, "That's... that's unfair, Emma! He baited me after replacing me! He named the boy after Liam!"

"Yeah, instead of you. Must have shattered your massive ego!" Emma scoffed. "Whatever this creepy incestuous attraction is, Hook, I'm done with it. I'm not debasing myself for the likes of you just because I have abandonment issues and an obsessive stalker is the perfect way around dealing with them!"

"Rather sounds like a perfect arrangement, luv... though I take objection to being called a stalker," he smirked and wagged his brows.

Emma glared and countered, "You spent weeks lurking on dark rooftops looking at me through your spyglass. Don't even pretend you didn't watch me getting undressed in my room at Granny's!"

"I...er...t'was once by accident, Swan. I was looking for any sign of my beloved ship!"

"You mean the one you let Eric die for and he only survived because Ariel saved Blackbeard and you let me believe it was you who reunited them when Ariel was never even back in Storybrooke, it was just Zelena tickling your balls, telling you everything you wanted to hear about my being your one true love?" Emma snapped, to which Hook winced again, looking like he wanted a time portal to open up and swallow him.

"Well, I'm not, Hook," she continued along with the glare. "Get that through your head _right now_. That kiss meant _nothing_. I was emotionally screwed up and terrified for my son and mourning his father and you took advantage, and you've been taking advantage of me _ever since_. You used Neal's desperation to get my forgiveness to make me push him away even more so you could step in. Winning my heart with honesty and chivalry my ass. You used Tinkerbell to try and make me jealous. You forced your way into my family's good-bye at the town line, _the last moment I had together with my son and his father_ never mind thought would be the last I ever saw my parents.

"My parents whom you mooched off in the Enchanted Forest to go on some teenage crush bender of thieving and boozing - and leaving out whoring because you were infatuated with me, a woman you _just met and spent all but five days of that knowing me trying to murder me,_ and crying in your rum over my not being there for you to emotionally abuse into loving you _is not romantic and in any way heroic_. You then sexually assaulted me on my doorstep in front of my son, took credit for a selfless and heroic thing that _Neal_ did, told me you were glad I was heartbroken so you could still pursue me like a predator hunting prey, and spent your every waking moment trying to guilt me into kissing you again. You probably came along as my 'back up' hoping Zelena would try to kill you so I'd have to kiss you, _even if_ that doomed my family, because _everything_ is about you. And you sure as shit did not give a storybook pep talk to get me to stick around _for my family_."

"I'll admit," Hook conceded, a bit flustered, "that there was some selfish intention in that, but should a man not peruse the object of his affection?"

"I'm not an _object_ and I'm not yours to pursue. _And I don't want any more of your rum_ ," Emma concluded with a growl, pushing his flask away, relieved when the patrol car came to a stop and her father burst out.

Of course, her mother piled out of the passenger side holding her brother which violated all kinds of laws, and Henry emerged from the back carrying The Book which she had half a mind to throw on the ground and set on fire to be rid of The Author and all of the related bullshit therein.

"Emma!" Snow cried, "are you all right? We saw the column of magic-"

"Yes, we're _both_ fine," interjected Hook with a scowl at the woman neither realized was his granddaughter, "thanks very much."

Hook was ignored as Emma explained that she was able to close the portal. No, she didn't know what happened to Zelena, but they still existed, so that was a good sign.

"Well," concluded David cheerfully, "I think this calls for some extra celebration. Assuming you're not still intending to head back to New York?"

"No," replied Emma, trying not to sigh, "I'm staying."

Henry cheered and threw his arms around her middle. Emma fought tears as she returned the tight embrace. He hugged just like his dad.

 _For now_ , Emma amended silently as she walked with them to the car.

* * *

AN: So, Emma let Hook know she's off the market. Of course, the creep is a sociopath, so it's not like that will matter! Also, if you have never watched _Fringe_ , what's wrong with you? Check it out right now!

Next up: What _did_ become of Zelena?


	17. Wicked West vs Death

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWO**

 **WICKED WEST vs. DEATH**

A swirl of green smoke coalesced into a slightly dizzy Wicked Witch. After getting her bearings, Zelena brushed leaves from her clothes, looked around -and frowned.

She had not appeared in the Enchanted Forest as she'd expected to - though, to be fair, she could have appeared anywhere Emma Swan or that pirate were thinking of if they'd fallen into the time portal ahead of her... though she'd been fairly certain that they had not.

Had some other townie been bailing hay in the barn and taken her to wherever the hell this was... other than _Fremont Street_ and Fly's Photographic Studio?

"Tombstone," a brassy alto boomed from behind.

Zelena spun, haplessly planting a pointy boot in a pile of horse manure before facing a tall, curvy, ebony-skinned woman dressed in a boobsy black cloak with hot pink press-on nails that matched extensions in long, dark hair that protruded from beneath a black cowboy hat adorned with a band of small white bones.

0"Who are you?" Zelena demanded, clenching her hands, ready to unleash green death if necessary. "Are you the idiot who fell into my portal and brought us to... to... where the hell is _Tombstone_ anyway?"

The woman snorted. "For making jokes about famous Westerns, honey child, you've done a lousy job at your homework. Tombstone is in Arizona and it's Wednesday, October 26, 1881 at..." She glanced toward a dusty clock tower, "two fifty-nine in the afternoon. We're about to see if Wicked always wins... or if I do."

The clock chimed and the woman grinned, "Guess that clock's a little fast."

Before Zelena could ask further questions, two groups of men were converging on them in the narrow lot, all with pistols at their hips, one of them wearing a shiny star. The self-proclaimed Wicked Witch put on her best fake smile in an attempt to charm the men, but they didn't seem to notice her or her annoying companion.

"Yeah, they can't see us."

The two groups of men were now only about six feet apart when the lot of them suddenly drew their weapons and started firing. Zelena shrieked in surprise, darting out of the way, uncertain if being invisible would protect her against the projectiles.

It didn't.

In the cacophony of bullets tearing through human flesh, there was a _ping_ of a round ricocheting off the shiny metal star followed by a sharp pain in the redhead's chest. As the thirty second gunfight came to an end, the two parties retreating with their dead and wounded as quickly as they had arrived, their unseen victim looked down in shock at the blood smeared on her pale hand from the hole in her chest.

"That... that's not how this was supposed to go," Zelena complained in a whiny, petulant tone.

"Doesn't matter," the strange woman smiled cruelly. "I always get my woman in the end. Wicked's got nothing on Death, honey child. _Mavet_ always wins."

It was with an utterly confused look upon her face that the Wicked Witch's eyes became vacant and she crumpled to the horse-turd-covered ground, doing a proper face plant right into a fresh pile.

Smirking, the Grim Reaper declared, "And you _dead_."

There was no reason to see that one into the After Life, to purgatory to decide her fate. She'd had a reservation in Hell for quite some time and Azreal would no doubt be greeting her soul momentarily and showing her to eternal damnation... which, if Mavet had to take a guess, would look a lot like a shitty one room apartment in Manhattan, married to an adulterous doofus, and stuck in the form of his wife living out her life cleaning toilets for bellow minimum wage.

Smirking to herself, the Angel of Death wiggled her fingers, vanishing the body of the Wicked Witch, to the dismay of the gathering horse flies, and then she sashayed a few doors down to a saloon where she found Metatron unhappily ordering a sasbarilla.

"Have fun?" he asked.

" _So_ much. How are things in 2013 Storybrooke?"

"Nothing to write home about. The 'rents are concluding their narcissistic name-saking ceremony to pretend like they didn't tell the man they're naming their child after to fuck off in the tone of 'you are not part of this family'. Bloody hypocrites."

"All humans are, honey."

"I just wish the Almighty had put a little more thought into _that_ story before that inane world gained a life of its own. True love based on a single conversation and corpse-kissing... At _least_ She should have written a second draft of that one before poofing it into existence - and then basing an entire world's Savior on the spawn of that shallow mess that's actually the most well-adjusted relationship in that entire magical universe - which isn't saying much."

"Well, you could say that about _this_ world. Humans are just _dumb_. I've always said, if God had made _Eve_ first, there'd be a lot less fuckery. Giving sentience to some hairy ape with a dick for a brain first was the first bad call our maker ever made - from which all others have followed. Well, that and forbidding us to drink! I don't miss the genitals. All these filthy perverts in here scratching their balls - and either there's a brothel upstairs or this place is owned by a fishmonger."

"I did notice a particular... aroma," agreed Metatron with a wrinkling of his nose while scowling around his foamy beverage before squinting and declaring, "Anyway, the party's over and the pity party is about to begin. Saviors and their self-esteem issues, always needing reassurance that they aren't not perpetual fuck-ups."

"Even though they are?"

"Exactly. I'd better put a stop to it before she falls off the wagon and drowns her sorrows in homemade rum and a three century old ball scratchier. Why do I always get the annoying ones?"

Metatron vanished and Mavet turned her attention to the sexy Hispanic burlesque dancer/whorehouse "matron" flirting with some cowboys.

" _Really_?" Death groaned as the pretty woman strolled over.

"What?" Serendipity replied. "Who do you think inspired Virgil Earp to become a Deputy U.S. Marshal?"

"Yeah, and he's gonna get shot in the back ending up permanently maimed, one of his brothers will be assassinated in a year, and he'll end up living with his parents while his compulsive gambling pimp baby brother gets all the glory with a flatteringly fictionalized biography that makes him the symbol of American frontier justice."

"Hey, I just inspire them. I'm not responsible for whether that inspiration leads to fame and fortune or maiming and hospice care," the Muse stated before slamming back a shot of tequila. "Who do I look like, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?"

Mavet snorted. "Well, you could at least inspire those prostitutes to clean their pussies. Magdaline had better hygiene. It smells like Peter's boat up in here."

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AN: St. Peter was a fisherman. Vaginosis, get it? Yeah, pretty lame! Serendipty was played by Selma Hyack in _Dogma_. The infamous shoot-out at the O.K. Corral did not actually take place at the O.K. Corral and really did last only 30 seconds. Zelena's pre-death experience was inspired by the _Star Trek_ episode where Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Checkov were transported by aliens into a fictionalized reproduction of Tombstone in the roles of the good guys. For the purpose of this story, Zelena was transported to the past of "our world" as in the OUAT Earth, before her inglorious demise and face-plant in horse poop... so, technically, October 26, 1881 couldn't have been a Wednesday since "Selfless, Brave, and True" failed to understand how the International Dateline works... or even get the time zone correct for Phuket which made October 23, 2011 a Saturday rather than a Sunday, even though October 23, 1983 was a Sunday which would have been a cool full-circle thing they probably intended before hiring math-challenged assholes.

Next up: Emma acclimates, not very well, to a do-over and what to do with a town full of assholes. She has some anger management issues still to work out


	18. Coronation Blues

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: I'm glad someone thinks I am good at math. I am really not. If there's one thing I am worse at than spelling (and I am REALLY bad at spelling), it's math; I dread any instance in which I might be called upon to use arithmetic without my phone handy to use the calculator! (As to Baby Neal, don't make assumptions! Just because Prince Dumb and Princess Dumber picked a name doesn't mean it'll stick.)**

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 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THREE**

 **CORONATION BLUES**

It was at once a relief for Emma to see her parents' story in The Book unchanged and painful as they announced her brother's name.

Painful and stupid, and quite honestly without a lusty pirate for a distraction, Emma'd had quite enough of it. (Well, Hook was out there lurking, moping, trying to look pathetically in need of affection, but she had no inclination to set _that_ incestuous clusterfuck in motion again.)

"No," she stated as her mother made to hand over the two day old baby.

"You don't want to hold him?" asked Mary Margaret, confused and a little affronted.

 _If she's affronted now_ , Emma thought, but she wasn't going to do this. Even her soulless doppleganger had issues with this, and maybe she didn't give enough of a fuck to made a big deal about it, but _Emma_ did - and if neither Gold nor Henry were going to stand up for what was right in the face of her holier-than-thou parents at their coronation party, then she had to be the one to set things straight.

"No," Emma corrected, "I don't want you to name him that."

"You... what?" she sputtered.

David interjected, "We thought you'd be glad that we'd honored Neal. So he wouldn't be forgotten."

Emma tried not to glare as she countered, "You make sure someone isn't forgotten by talking about them, remembering _them_ , not foisting their name off on a baby that was conveniently born at the same time they died.

"And don't try to pretend this is 'honorable'. Neal might still be alive if you both hadn't told him to fuck the hell off, that he basically wasn't considered part of this family and the 'we always find each other' motto when he wanted to get back to me and Henry!"

Both David and Mary Margaret suddenly looked uneasy, obviously caught in their revisionist history - a lot like when the truth came about what they did to Emma before her birth. She was _so_ going to have words with them about that later!

"Wait," Henry spoke up, "you wouldn't help my dad in the Enchanted Forest?"

"Um..."

The pair exchanged a look and David tried to explain, "Henry, you have to understand, we didn't think it was possible to create another portal. We didn't want Neal to get his hopes up."

Eyes narrowing, the tween accused, "I don't need a super power to tell that you're lying! Did you even like my dad? Or did you let him and Belle go off alone because you think that side of my family doesn't matter?"

Wincing, Mary Margaret tried, "Henry that's not-"

"You didn't care about him," Henry cut her off. "And now he's dead. So you think naming my uncle after him will make up for being jerks to him when he was alive? It doesn't! It's just weird and inappropriate!"

That said, Henry got up and rushed off, out the front door. Emma almost went after him, but a nod from Gold said he'd handle it, and she was relieved. She didn't want to dredge up more Neal-related stuff with the kid, and besides, she rather hoped that the pair, in this _not fucked up universe_ , could actually do real grandfather-grandson bonding instead of Henry emotionally blackmailing Gold and Gold responding by using him as a crazy dog woman's pawn and path to becoming the Super Dark One.

When the bell stopped jingling, David let out a sigh and a contrite, "We really do feel bad about not helping him and Belle, Emma. It just... at the time it felt right."

"Yeah, letting him and Belle fight for you to get Regina's castle back, then give them nothing, but Hook wanted nothing to do with any of you without my pants to get in, so you gave him a royal horse and a shitload of supplies," Emma snapped. "Not unlike when you let Regina off with a slap on the wrist and all of her minions, magic, castle, and no restrictions against murdering anyone _other than you_. Being a hero isn't about letting assholes have a thousand and one second chances - especially not when you act like an asshole to the actual good guys in the story!"

"Emma!" Mary Margaret gasped, trying to shield the baby from the cursing.

"For fuck's sake," Emma groaned, "he's only a day old. He's not going to be tainted for life since you didn't have the opportunity to enact some shitty selfish spell while you were pregnant to ensure you got a prefect kid!"

Okay, so that was out sooner than expected, and just as Regina walked in with Robin in time to hear.

"What spell?" the former Evil Queen asked while the pair looked utterly panicked.

Glaring, Emma stood up and stated, "The spell they had Merlin's apprentice cast when my mother was pregnant, because some dumb magic tree that I'm guessing was some poor chump that a Nimue cursed and didn't actually know shit clued them in that babies are not destined to be good from conception and have the free will to screw up their lives and become villains. My mother couldn't _stand_ that, so they _took away my free will with magic_ by taking away the light potential of another baby, dooming her to a miserable life of constant fuck-ups and _me_ to this magic-I-don't-want-Savior-shit. I could have had a normal life, there wouldn't have been a kid with enough magic for the Dark Curse to be cast _and broken_ , so we all could have been living happily ever after in the Enchanted Forest. But no, Snow White wanted a perfect baby so she wouldn't have to actually try very hard at being a good mother."

Mary Margaret clutched at her son and looked fretfully at her daughter. "Emma..."

"Don't," Emma cut her off. "Don't even try to bullshit your way out of what you did to Maleficent's kid and how you laughed in her face when she pleaded with you and said your unborn kid was worth sacrificing hers."

David blinked uncomfortably at his wife. "You actually told her that?"

"I... I don't recall the exact phrasing..."

"And _now_ ," Emma seethed, "my parents think they can make up for sending Henry's father off to his death without even a horse so they get could with making a new baby by naming my brother after my dead lover. Like, 'Oh, this is our peace offering to fate or whatever that this time we really will be kinder people since screwing over that innocent baby didn't quite do it. Look, uh, sorry we didn't want to help him because we're selfish jerks and we couldn't make another baby if we were bothered trying to find the first one. Anyway, we'll have this party and make everyone think we named that new baby after Neal to remind everyone he was really great and stuff so, all's well right?'"

Regina snorted, "I'm guessing that would be a 'no'."

"Damn straight!" snapped Emma and accused her parents, "You didn't even _know_ him. You have no _right_ to use his name without asking the people who _did_ , who are _actually mourning him_. I have had enough of this disingenuous hypocrisy that you keep trying to pass off as heroism and wisdom, like you know more about being a parent or a good person than I do. You _don't_.

"So stop patting yourselves on the back and think about the fact that you ruined my life!" she shouted. "And then you followed that up by letting son's father die and my brother get kidnapped and nearly murdered at birth in a plot to erase our family from existence - all because, for some impossible-to-comprehend-reason, you decided not to give birth in the one place in town magically protected against the one person trying to destroy an entire timeline - and instead of sitting here trying to maintain some arcane tradition that has zero meaning in this world, sign up for parenting classes _not_ taught by I-traded-my-baby-for-a-ballgown Cinderella!"

Her hands clenched into fists, Emma gave one last huff and declared, "I'm going to bed. Try not to let any megalomaniacal jerks you screwed over in the past into town, because I am off the Savior clock until further notice!"

* * *

AN: It had to be said, didn't it? Snowing are the worst parents. They really should be sterilized. Now, if you have a suggestion for what to re-name Baby Neal, send me your suggestions!

Next up: A pity party is paused.


	19. Room Without a View

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Miss in Minn: Thanks for the head's up on "Attack of the TV Sets" ( s/11712192/1/Attack-of-the-TV-Sets) by Kelanie729. It's great! I recommend it to everyone (and really hope there's a sequel).**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FOUR**

 **ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW**

Emma hadn't set foot in Neal's room since the day before his funeral when she'd had to sort through his suitcase, looking for a suit to bury him in. That was the only time she'd let herself break down, allowed herself, Savior that she was supposed to be, the privilege and weakness.

Picking the lock was easy.

Nothing had changed, not that she'd expected it since Gold had only been freed of Zelena's thrall hours ago. That other her hadn't bothered to check back in, assumed that Gold had cleared it out before he was cast out of town, or had paid Granny to do it since he'd apparently shied away from anything that represented his adult son as much as she had. She was happily preoccupied swooning over Hook, revealing in her soulless lusting and half-assed, delusional plan to ensure she was never alone again.

Emma's soul now felt bruised and battered, worse off than the trouncing her body had taken. Fighting a complete breakdown, Emma snatched up Neal's purple scarf from the open suitcase and sunk onto the bed, hugging it to her chest the way she used to clutch her baby blanket when she was a small child cast off to yet another home.

"I don't know how to do this without you, Neal," Emma wept. "I don't want to be a fairy tale princess or anyone's savior. I just want you here. Why can't we have just gone back to Portland and done things differently? It's not fair! You deserved a happy life more than _anyone_ here!"

"You can't always get what you want."

The drawling voice of Metatron made Emma jump and nearly roll off the bed as she turned. "What the - what are you doing here!?"

"Well, I'm not congratulating you on an impending virgin birth..."

"If you're here to make fun of my misery, you can go back to Heaven," Emma grouched. "I closed the time portal. Nothing got changed. Universe saved. And I'm not going to off myself to get out of my duty to fix things, so you don't have to worry, if that's why you're here. Happy?"

"It's not in my nature to be 'happy'. I am... satisfied," Metatron answered, taking a seat in a chair by the window. "But as I was saying, you can't always get what you want -"

"But sometimes you get what you need?" Emma muttered.

"Now you're just taking all the fun out of it!" the Angel complained.

"I fail to see what's 'fun' in any of this," argued Emma. "All we ever got was 'almost home' and we didn't get to raise our son and I crapped all over Neal's sacrifice and turned my promise into an incestuous farce that was going to end existence-"

"To be fair, not the _entirely_ of existence, just a fraudulently spawned corner of it," Metatron clarified.

"And I didn't even get to apologize to him for it," she continued, "to tell him that I loved him and I'm sorry that I was too scared and angry and confused to save him, so I kept saving all the wrong people for the rest of my life to make up for it, which doesn't even make sense and just ended up being an insult to him, to the promise I made. I let his father become even more evil and I became evil and fell in love with another evil man who'd hurt him, and how I can I possibly make up for any of that if he's still dead? How can I possibly keep my promise when I know now there's no Tallahassee without him?"

Emma's shoulders slumped in defeat. "I thought I could do this, I really did, but I don't want this responsibility," she sniffed. "I never did. I don't want to be anyone's savior or a princess in some magical mess of a world. I don't know _how_. I don't know why I thought I could do this!"

The Angel sighed before advising, "You just be yourself. You be who you always were, before you came to this town, and from time to time, you be these people's savior also. It'll be easier with your soul in residence instead of locked away in Purgatory. It'll be easier _as your real self_ rather than that homunculus with your memories masquerading as Emma Swan without morals and driven by an insatiable need for a soul - even one belonging to a dirty pirate."

"I still can't believe I, she, whatever did that," Emma groaned, face in her hands. "I don't know how to get beyond that, to stop seeing all of that toxic abusive mess, seeing how it destroyed my connections to every one of my family members _and I didn't care_. And now I've gone and ruined what little progress I'd made with my parents over my brother's name, and yeah, they deserved it, but-"

"It was rather spiteful and petty to humiliate them in front of their friends and subjects," Metatron offered, "not to mention your son."

"I don't know how to talk to him either," Emma admitted, "not... not after what happened, the things he said that were true about Regina's memories, the parenting memories of a sociopath who can't love anyone more than herself, that messed me up even more. They're still there, like they're caught in a war with my real memories, and I know they're not real, that those weren't _my_ feelings because those things _never_ happened, but those feelings and memories defined the kind of mother I was to Henry for that year, a pretty shitty one, so now all I have to go on are _not_ being a mother, having been a _bad_ mother in a fake life, and having been a _worse_ mother in a real future."

"I could take those memories away," the Angel stated, "but you've learned from them. I know it hurts, Emma, that you have memories of raising your son, the choice you should have made, and that the memories are all wrong just makes it even more painful. You just have to let go of those false conceptions and the pain, you have to focus on the memories that came before, on what motivated you then, the kind of mother you wanted to be and why."

"One who still lied to her son about his father," Emma sighed.

"I'll never really be complete without him, you know?" she muttered. "I'll never be as good of a person as I could have been with Neal. Never as good of a mother or daughter or friend... or lover," she frowned, "not that I'm in the market for one. Every other guy I've chosen has turned out to be an asshole... and maybe that was the point. Either way, I'm done dating fairy tale characters, so you don't have to worry about that."

"Well, I'm not here to get into your sexually-expressed self-esteem issues," stated Metatron. "Though I was popping in to say I forgot to mention that you're STD free."

Emma sniffed. She'd actually forgotten all about that in the mess of everything else. Hook, Walsh, and by proxy Cora had turned her into a public service announcement for safe sex.

"I am?"

"It turns out Monkey Herpes and that particular magical-world-acquired neurosyphilis are not easy to cure. Which is a pity for the numerous citizens of your hamlet that have one or the other - or both in the case of a few pirates - so you should probably have Dr. Whale start researching that and make sure Henry knows about safe sex."

"He's twelve!"

"Twelve going on sixteen the way all those portals and memory losses affect the onset of puberty. It's like dosing water with human growth hormones," said Metatron. "You're probably lucky you scared off his first girlfriend the last time around or he'd have gotten her pregnant in the back of your car and your family would officially become a bigger white trash cliché than an episode of _Jerry Springer_."

"Great," Emma sighed and wondered if she could get Whale to proscribe something to repress puberty... a bit longer... like forever... although even just the normal couple of years would do it to keep _Henry_ from 'doing it'.

"Oh, come on," the Angel complained. "I came baring glad tidings. God doesn't just hand out divinely purified pap-smears every day."

"I _am_ grateful," Emma stated. "But I've got a lot of other crap to not be grateful about right now, okay? My parents are lying hypocrites-"

"Says the mother who told her son his father was a dead firefighter as you just pointed out. All parents are liars and hypocrites, Emma. It's an unfortunate fact of them being mortal and fallible and in the case of your world, just about all of them had either no parental figure growing up or an evil parental figure."

"They blew off their _credo_ because they didn't want to deal with Neal," huffed Emma, "the man they were just days before telling me I should try to get over my pain and talk to him even if it's hard, because life is made up of moments and that could be a good moment - but it apparently interfered with their good moment of baby making!"

"The prospect of sex can be blinding. You're far from immune. Lust, quick and easy, swayed your attention away from love with all of its painful complications. A new child was, in essence, their lust-"

"And I'm a painful complication," Emma grumbled.

"You u viewed your own son that way when you were pregnant - and when you first came to this town. You wanted to leave."

"But I didn't. Because I could tell he was unhappy. They didn't _know_ if I was happy or not. They just chose to believe that I was so they could be okay with their decision!"

"As you chose to believe Henry was happy in with a new family-"

"OKAY I GET IT!" Emma growled and crossed her arms. "But I'm still angry with them."

"What happened with that Author, Emma, is far more convoluted than in the altered timeline where history was regressively revised and it required only the innate selfishness in all of its inhabitants to make that spell happen," Metatron reminded.

"But they still made the choice, didn't they?"

"Yes."

"They I'm still mad at them. Maybe they weren't jerks to the same extent, so then they were even more gullible. I'm tired of them trusting evil people for _no_ reason! And don't tell me they were written that way! I was supposed to be changing things, but even when I was entirely soul-having they just kept trusting evil-er and evil-er people!"

"To be fair, the sheer amount of memory loss curses and concussions they've suffered have most likely resulted in traumatic brain injuries," said the Angel. "Again, you might want to have Dr. Whale look into that. Did your father have a full physical when he joined the Sheriff's Department?- Oh, wait, he's self-appointed and completely untrained, but for some reason you've been okay with that."

"We were barely in town at the same time," Emma pointed out and amended, "And it's not like it matters now. I highly doubt my father's going to want to play co-Sheriff after I basically called him a lying hack of a hero and father."

"Hm... true. Sounds like you're in for a fun few days."

"Yeah, I was kinda planning on spending them here. I'm sure there's enough Apollo Bars in Neal's suitcase to hold out through the weekend and everyone avoids this room like the Vault of the Dark One is going to open up and suck them in."

Emma sniffed again and grumbled, "All Neal ever did was try to help people, put them before his own happiness, you know? It's just not fair that I got a second chance after all of the dark shit I did, and he made one mistake he was conned into, and he's stuck and he can't even get into Heaven properly unless I don't fuck all of this up because we're all like... damned children's book characters or whatever until I fix things. Why can't he get a break? Why can't his soul be good or pure enough? It shouldn't have to rest on me, on my not screwing up this time, because I'm not that good or pure."

"You're not, that's true. And I know it's unfair," Metatron agreed. "It's not right for those who suffer repeated indignity while trying to do good meet a tragic death while those who do nothing but hurt innocents for their own gain, who have wronged them are rewarded with the chance to repent.

"But life isn't fair, Emma," the Angel continued. "It's no more fair to say to someone who grew up with nothing, who wanted nothing more than to have a home and a family and _be ordinary_ that she's meant for a life of tragedies and to carry the burden of ensuring the happiness of those who sacrificed her happiness as an innocent baby for their selfish adult intentions. And to be separated from her true love, from the life she would have chosen if destiny hadn't reared it's ugly head.

"If I had the power, I would take that burden from you, Emma, as I would all those I've had to give tasks that no mortal should bare the weight. I would give all those who died cruelly another chance, have those who commit unspeakable evil take their place in death. But I'm not God. I'm merely a messenger. All I can do is remind you that you are stronger than you think you are and that love transcends all realms."

"You're never truly alone, no matter how much you feel otherwise," Metatron told her, reaching out to touch the swan keychain. "You just need to have faith."

The headlights of a car passing down Main Street flashed into the window and when the glare faded, the Voice of God was gone.

Emma let out a sigh of, "Stupid Angels." She almost expected a disembodied snarky reply, but when none came, Emma laid back down, tucking the scarf under her head and clutching the keychain.

She was supposed to be "The Hope" of this town, but she'd never had much hope in her life. She'd never had much faith in anything, perhaps least of all in love when it mattered most.

"You're my Tallahassee, Neal. I forgive you, for all of it. I hope you can forgive me. I hope you'll wait for me. I'll wait for you."

Fighting more tears, she pressed a kiss to the cheap trinket, then closed her eyes and let the sound of Granny and Ruby arguing lull her into an exhausted sleep.

* * *

AN: More emo Emma angst. Sorry about that.

Next up: A minor disaster.


	20. Black-Eye

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: I'm glad you like the change in cover art. I felt the transition from absurd dark humor to a lighter (mostly) tone for Part 2 called for a change. I have been rewatching _Fringe_ lately, and while OUAT has their creepy field of fuck flowers that always seem to symbolize betrayal no matter how much the show tries to say otherwise, _Fringe_ had its field of white tulips where Peter and Olivia met as children, and the tulip remained a thematic symbol of the quest for redemption and forgiveness, from it's place on the original Peter's headstone to the very end when Peter receives Walter's paper tulip, mailed before their tragically beautiful parting of ways. _Fringe_ is the show that OUAT should have emulated with how it addresses all of the same topics, especially family and romance, so it's my inspiration for this story.  
On the character label front, I agree, they need an Multiple Character option. On the *plus* side, though, I get shade from CS/Hookers every time I have a Hook chapter and post his character in the list and they are shocked to discover he's not portrayed as a heroic demi-god. (Oh, boo hoo you spoiled little shits. Go back to your _Twilight_ rewrites!).**

 **Note to Miss in Minn: You can Google my nom de plume. It's more often spelled Meretseger or Mertseger. I chose it maybe 15 years ago for a Harry Potter forum. I don't recall why I spelled it differently, if that was intentional or I went by a site that misspelled it when I looked up anything snake-related. I selected the Egyptian serpent goddess, I think because I was pissed at some Gryffindor-named member at the time, and intended but never did publish any Harry Potter stories, all of them unfinished on my computer's hard drive. Even though I parted ways with the Harry Potter fandom after the last book left me disappointed, I kept the name just because I am lazy. No worries on the Baby Neal front. He absolutely won't be named "Graham" or after any other character on the show. I want original suggestions, not namesakes. And if no one provides one more fitting than the one I have in mind, I'm going with my muse.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIVE**

 **BLACK-EYE**

Someone was hogging the covers.

That was Emma's first thought as she started to wake in a chilly motel room with a thin coating of frost on the windows that presumably, her sleep-fogged mind supplied, had nothing to do with a frightened young ice queen... though there was always the Snow Queen possibility, a confrontation she didn't really relish, though having memories that she shouldn't have had would give her an edge when she finally got around to it.

For now, though, Emma just wanted to stay here, curled up on a lumpy bed at Granny's and away from the world and responsibilities and people she would have to face to whom she couldn't actually explain that she'd died in a future in a universe that didn't exist anymore after making a laundry list of bad, often selfish, sometimes downright villainous choices that had hurt people, hurt them, hurt her, made a complete mess of things.

Well, maybe not being able to - or having no reason to - tell them was a relief. But it was also an added burden that made her wonder if this is what Gold felt like after getting that clairvoyance, the knowing, but not really knowing, because now everything was changed... by being unchanged.

She would have to get up eventually, though. Zelena had vanished and was presumed dead since they were all alive, which meant Regina had probably taken Robin home with her, which meant Henry had probably gone to the Loft with her parents... which meant this morning he would be regretting sharing a small and autistic space with a newborn and probably wondering where she'd gone after the party and worrying that she'd gone up to Hook's room, because she'd done a shit job at shielding him from her sleazy flirtations with his own step-grandfather.

This time around she was going to be a better mom, she was going to stop worrying about how much of the year in New York was her and some fake personality transplant from Regina's memories and just _be present_ in her kid's life, because he was going to grow up so fast and she'd miss it all.

But she just wanted a few more minutes...

 _BANG BANG BANG_

"SWAN! SWAN OPEN UP!"

Emma swore and pulled the pillow over her head as she realized Hook was banging on the door to her room down the hall.

The knocking and bellowing was followed by the distinctive sound of a hook being used to break off a door knob and she rolled her eyes. Seriously, the guy was like obsessively psychotic... which probably explained her grandmother being a crazy bitch who slut shamed an innocent woman and helped a rapist thief get away in order to get the throne she'd been obsessing over since she was five years old.

Thank _God_ Leopold was just an old idiot living in a world with an ass-backward social contract and David got his mother's kindness rather than his father's abusive alcoholism like her uncle... or Ruth at least tempered the addictive trait that Emma knew she shouldn't have tempted downing rum with the fool she could hear upturning her things for clues.

She could go in there and give him a piece of her mind, but Hook was the last person she wanted to deal with right now, so she stayed quiet as a church mouse and waited until he was stalking past, apparently with a borrowed cellphone and grumbling about the "talking phone" and other worlds that made no sense.

Probably, Emma concluded, she should inform _someone_ that she hadn't been kidnapped by an evil entity or run out of town, but _first_ she needed a shower and an espresso. Make that a _double_ espresso.

Emma waited until the creaking stairs revealed the pirate's departure, then she slipped out of Neal's room and into hers, scowling at the damage done. A quick spell fixed it, the price of which she would probably regret later, but she didn't need Granny busting in on her with a crossbow.

Scowling, not feeling especially optimistic about this task of hers, Emma turned on the clanking old shower, yanked off her grass-stained clothes and stepped under the spray.

The ice cold spray.

" _Sonofabitch_!" Emma shrieked. " _Goddamned pirate!_ "

It was bad enough that Hook had busted down her door looking for her and left her room smelling of rum, unwashed leather, and that weird Enchanted Forest cologne he used to cover the stench of his coat. But this was just... _ugh!_

She really should have known, though. During her weeks living here with Henry, she'd thought it was just the ancient water heater or boiler - since she hadn't had the opportunity to use the Inn's shower the only previous time she'd spent here that first night in town. But it was _Hook_.

It was only Bitch Emma's first "sleep over" (she'd decided upon calling her homunculus 'Bitch Emma') with Hook in their creepy fuckpad with an evil basement lair that revealed the pirate really _really_ enjoyed the modern convince of long, luxurious, _hot_ showers to the point of leaving no hot water for anyone else.

Something Emma both wished she'd remembered sooner and had never known at all. The whole fake memory shit thanks to Regina was emotionally traumatizing enough!

Sighing, Emma dressed in a clean sweater and jeans and retrieved her favorite jacket. It was miserably cold and damp out, but she was only going to the diner for coffee.

Her heart constricted a bit, recalling how she'd stood Neal up, never expecting it would be the last opportunity to talk to him, to resolve things.

Ruby was at the counter and gave her a relieved look.

"Emma! There you are! You left your phone. Hook took it..."

"Of course he did," she groaned.

Ruby gave her a sympathetic look. "Looks like a black eye kind of morning."

Grimacing, Emma agreed, "Yeah, no amount of cinnamon is going to-"

Suddenly the patrol car sped by, siren blaring.

"What the-?"

Carrying her black coffee with two shots of espresso, Emma followed the werewolf waitress out front, glimpsing the patrol car as it turned sharply onto Marine Drive at the end of Main.

It was a moment before Emma noticed something literally out of place. "Where the hell is my car?"

The Bug had been parked between Granny's and the flower shop.

"Oh," Ruby uttered, "you might have also left your keys with your phone here last night..."

Emma almost threw her coffee down. _"I am going to castrate that fucking pirate!"_

* * *

AN: Short but... sweet? 'Bitch Emma' is an homage to _Family Guy's_ 'Bitch Stewie'. They really do remind me of one another! If only 'Bitch Emma' on the show would melt into a puddle of human sludge!

FORMATTING QUESTION: Anyone know what causes the -276 and 0 to randomly appear at the front of my paragraphs sometimes? I post my stories using Word Pad files.

Next up: Will Emma kill Hook?


	21. Black-Eye Part II

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIVE**

 **BLACK-EYE PART TWO**

Having borrowed Ruby's car, Emma headed to Marine Drive whereupon she didn't have to go far. It was there she found Henry being sternly lectured by David and Hook being yelled at by an irate Smee whom she vaguely remembered had taken out a loan from Gold to buy the fishing boat of the guy Cora turned into a fish - as later discovered from a dock security camera no one ever checked - and never came back, perhaps because someone accidentally caught and ate him. _Ew_.

All of the yelling had to do with the Bug teetering on the side of the boat and the dozens of lobster traps scattered about with very unhappy lobsters in them. The yellow Volkswagen was clearly going to need serious front end work, the boat appeared to be taking on water, and Hook was now sporting a rather serious-looking gash through his right eyebrow, dabbing at it with a monogrammed handkerchief. Henry, thankfully, appeared to have only a small cut on chin, because if he was badly injured she wouldn't be able to yell at him for his second and apparently successful attempt at 'borrowing' her car.

"Do I even _want_ to ask?" Emma grated as she joined them.

"Emma!" Hook beamed, "you're all right!"

She could have held her temper in check. Instead, she walked up to him, remarked, "And you're hurt. Here, let me see that..." And when took her remark as concern and affection and leaned closer - Emma punched him square in the eye.

"AHHHH!" Hook howled. "What the blood hell, Swan!? Now it'll never heal right!"

"NO ONE BORROWS MY CAR WITHOUT ASKING!" Emma sneered. "And _good_. Maybe that'll save other emotionally vulnerable women from being swayed by your charms if you're hideously disfigured!"

Hook leered and wagged his non-injured brow, "In my experience women _love_ scars."

"Do you _want_ me to add scolding hot coffee to that eye, Hook?"

Grimacing, Hook whined in his defense, "Borrowing your vessel was the lad's idea."

"Not to let _you_ drive, you dirty pirate!" Henry growled.

"I'll have you know that I bathe regularly!"

Emma punched Hook in the arm and he howled.

"What the-?"

"You bathe more than regularly! You used _all_ the hot water at the Inn this morning! And yet you still stink of rum and that damned cologne."

"It's a lovely scent. And Milah stole it for me from the Sultan of Agraba."

"Yeah, well, Milah's been dead for centuries and you're so over her that you wanted to get in my pants the moment we met, so I think it's time to toss it overboard and try something that doesn't smell like camel piss."

" _Thank you_ ," sighed David. "I've met sheep who smelled better."

"Hey! At least I don't put on whatever froo-froo shite some woman tells me to and sleep in sheets with little roses on them... well, not intentionally, anyway, but Granny threatened me with her crossbow when I remarked about it."

"Well, maybe if you did, you wouldn't be sleeping in a bed alone at Granny's!" David retorted, then rethought that remark. "Wait, no, forget I said that..."

Before the pirate could come up with a witty and sexually suggestive response so Emma could punch him in the eye again, Regina's Mercedes pulled up and the currently ex-Mayor who was trying to look like a normal citizen in jeans and a cardigan bellowed furiously, "HENRY DANIEL MILLS, YOU GET YOUR BUTT OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!"

Henry managed a pathetic 'help me' look at Emma which was met with a 'if you think you're afraid of her punishment, just wait until later' look.

The kid's shoulders slumped and he skulked toward the car. Regina put him in the passenger side and then stalked up to then, glared at Hook and sneered at David, "This is your fault, _you idiot_ , for teaching a twelve year old child to drive - down a crowded street - in the middle of the day - just because you were worried your were out-sex-appealed by a man with one hand and more eye make-up than me, Emma, and your wife combined!"

"I _am_ sexy," Hook piped up.

"SHUT UP!" all three shouted.

David defended, "Hook was driving. I don't really see-"

"Really?" Regina cut him off. "You are going to defend any instance in which my son _snuck out of your home_ and went joyriding in a barely street worthy, airbag-less death trap with an unlicensed, one-handed, alcoholic who calls cars 'land ships?"

"Erm..."

"You are hereby suspended indefinitely from the Sheriff's Department! Hand over your badge and gun."

"But...," sputtered David, "you resigned at the party last night and told Mary Margaret that she was in charge since she cast this curse..."

"That was a preemptive resignation taking effect when Mary Margaret's maternity leave ends in six weeks. I am _still_ Mayor and even if the actual _elected_ Sheriff objects-"

"I don't," said Emma.

Smirking, Regina ordered, "Go home, Charming. In _this_ world, men take paternity leave and change diapers. No damsel saving or high speed chasing for six weeks. And if the wife gets tired of you, go hang out with your Dwarfs."

Properly castigated and emasculated, David gave a helpless look toward Hook then handed Emma his badge and gun.

"Emma, I'm sorry," he pleaded. "Your mother and I... we never meant to hurt you, for you to be burdened like this. I know... I know the price of that was to lose you, and I know you suffered far worse for it than we did-"

"Damn right," she cut him off, "and I am not ready to talk about this let alone be okay with it. Go home. Go home and make sure you don't screw things up with another kid."

Emma handed him Ruby's keys and concluded with, "I'll have Tillman send a tow truck."

After David departed and Emma as awkwardly pulled on David's shoulder holster and tucked his badge in her pocket, Hook uttered, "So... can I go to the hospital before I bleed out?"

Regina made a disgusted sound and Emma answered, "In a minute. Also, you're under arrest."

He pouted. "Awwww, again? You know I'll just pick my way out of the handcuffs and cell, luv!"

Emma glared. "Not if I strip you naked and the only thing you have to pick the lock with is your mascara-enhanced lashes!"

Regina snorted at that while Hook leered, "Well, anything that involves getting naked with-"

Emma got very close, her voice very cold and she punctuated every line. "Again, I am not now nor will I _ever_ be your 'love' of any kind. The fact that you believe a green-skinned psychopath who wanted to erase me from existence on the fatedness of our 'true love' is a sign that you need some serious therapy... or syphilis ate your brain."

Emma shoved him into the back of the patrol car.

"What about my boat and my lobsters?" whined Smee.

Regina gave an over-dramatic sigh and waved her hand, poofing the lobster traps back to the dock, the Bug to the ally, and repaired the crumpled side of the boat. But not the car's bashed in front or leaky fuel line.

Arms re-crossed, Regina turned toward Emma and raised a brow, "And here I thought you were doodling little 'Emma plus Killian' hearts on your expense reports."

Scowling, Emma retorted, "I think I accidentally inhaled some pixie dust in Neverland. Getting my magic taken away by a chauvinist jackass who could have gotten my son killed _for a second time_ and has damaged my car is not exactly romantic. And _thanks_ for repairing everything _except_ my car."

"The car is a disgusting death trap that smells like dirty Ugg boots and Hook's camel urine cologne. I was hoping it would inspire you to replace it. How did you even end up with it?"

"I stole it," Emma shot back. "And it is not a death trap or smelly - pirate cologne notwithstanding. It's one of the _few_ personal possessions I actually have since I grew up completely alone and dirt poor _thanks to you_. But, hey, you got Henry who 'saved you'," she scoffed, "so it was all worth it, right? Well, thanks for freeing us all from Pan with your fucked up perception of motherhood and redemption, but I'll take the parenting from here!"

Regina sputtered. " _Excuse me_? I gave you a _year_ with Henry that included memories of a life raising him! Now I have to contend with him remembering _your_ parenting style which is clearly the reason he is doing things like stealing cars with pirates!"

"Are you kidding me!? Henry was sneaking around and breaking into and stealing shit long before I came into his life, or do you remember how he got me to Storybrooke in the first place!? And my parenting style is entirely based on your psycho memories of emotional neglect and gaslighting!"

"Well, at least I didn't give him a genetic predisposition to thievery!"

"Well, better than the genetic predisposition to sociopathy and mass murder that your mother passed down to you and your sister! Also, you're both sexual predators, so, bonus points for that!"

While Regina gaped, Emma opened the Mercedes' door and ordered Henry, "In the front of the squad car. Now."

Henry looked warily between the two women, Regina's fingers twitching in that fire-ball-conjuring way. Emma glared. He got in the car.

Emma pressed, "You sent Henry with David when you realized that you were a fucked up person who didn't know how to love. But you said 'fuck it' to therapy and accountability after my mother killed your mother, because... I don't know... that somehow evens the score in the Enchanted Forest. Well, this isn't the Enchanted Forest, Regina, where being an asshole makes you a victim. Cora left her baby in the woods, poisoned my grandmother, married you off to the guy she once fucked and had you tutored in evil by the other guy she once fucked as part of some plot to manipulate his curse in order to bump him off and become the Dark One. She manipulated _you_ into drinking a sterility potion while making you think she actually was trying to help you, which is bullshit _because she didn't have a heart when she was pregnant with you so how the fuck could she even know what motherhood felt like?_ "

While Regina looked shocked and unnerved that Emma knew about her infertility, Emma continued, "Your mother was a complete batshit crazy cunt, Regina, who deserved to be killed _in self defense of my family_. And the only reason I am not going to exercise my legal custody of Henry that you 'gifted' me with by taking out a restraining order against you is that Eva was a stone-cold bitch who got off on tripping peasants and gave my mother a fucked up perfection complex that has ruined my life as much as your selfish revenge shit."

Crossing her arms, Emma concluded, "But that doesn't mean you get to determine Henry's punishments. Or drag him along on your creepy dates with Sir Robin of Fucksley who probably won't even give a shit that your murdered his wife, which should make you seriously rethink that soulmate bullshit!"

"Wait," Regina interrupted her, "I _what_?"

"Killed Marian. _Had her executed for protecting my mother_ ," Emma retorted. "Did you think Tinkerbell said you ruined both of your lives by Robin getting happily married and having a kid?"

"I... I..." stammered Regina.

"And don't even try to argue that you're a good person because Henry says so," Emma continued. "I am sending him back to therapy, because this brainwashed 'you're not evil, you're my mom' stuff is not healthy. And don't even argue that Robin's opinion matters because of that soulmate bullshit because any guy who has been trapped in the woods with a bunch of men for thirty years would say that to _any_ woman. I'd wager that if he's into you after knowing you were the Evil Queen who ordered mass murders of the innocent people he was stealing for, then he'll be willing to overlook a little wife-murdering. Just hope he stole enough to pay for Roland's therapy when the kid finds out Daddy married Mommy's killer."

Not leaving Regina time to respond to that, Emma got in the patrol care where Hook and Henry were bickering, each blaming the other for their situation. Hook definitely won the childish pouting as Emma started the engine and peeled away from the constipated-looking former Evil Queen.

"What'd you say to her?" inquired Hook after a moment. "Looks like she swallowed a whole bag of those awful candies you made me think were headache medicine."

"I didn't make you think anything," Emma said and with a sidelong glance at Henry and a grimace, "I told her that she murdered Robin's wife."

Henry's stony teenage expression slipped and he sputtered, "Mom killed Marian?"

"Had her executed for harboring the fugitive Snow White. Apparently, she faked her death during some theft because she worried Robin and Roland would become targets and hoped that when Snow White overthrew Regina, they would be reunited."

Hook made a whistling sound and declared, " _That_ is _messed up_. Courting the fellow whose wife you murdered and inserting yourself as his kid's new mother? I knew Regina was evil, but..."

Turning to glare at Hook, Henry snapped, "Says the dirty pirate who slept with my grandmother for _seven years_ , sold my Dad out to a child-abusing demon out of spite, tried to have sex with my mom the moment you thought he was dead, and keep trying to sell me a load of crap that you and my dad were best friends! You're a venereal-diseased douchebag and I wouldn't have crashed the Bug if you had kept your hook to yourself!"

Emma gave her son a suspicious look. "I thought _Hook_ was driving?"

"Was a bit of a joint effort?" said the pirate diplomatically.

Gritting her teeth, Emma turned onto the road to the hospital and gave Hook a nasty look in the rear view mirror.

"MOM!" Henry suddenly shouted.

Emma snapped her gaze back to the road just in time to see something - was that a person? - fall out of the sky and land face down in the middle of Route 6.

She slammed on the brakes. Hook bashed his nose into the dividing cage.

"Bloody hell, Swan!"

Putting the car in park, Emma ordered Henry to stay put and got out. She kept her hand on her gun, not sure what to expect, as people didn't fall out of the sky every day, but in Storybrooke it wasn't exactly the oddest thing to happen either. On approach, she noted the person appeared to be male - and butt naked.

"Is he dead!?" gasped Henry who hadn't listened, of course.

"Looks dead," agreed Hook who had somehow gotten out as well.

The person grunted, making them all jump in surprise, and declared, "I'm not dead."

Pushing himself off the pavement, Neal brushed off some pine needles and amended, "Anymore... apparently. Damn, that hurt."

" _That_ hurt?" Hook complained. "She punched me in the eye!"

Grinning, Neal said, "Nice!"

Henry, after gaping in shock, grinned. "Dad! You're alive!"

"Yeah, buddy," replied Neal, grinning back. "I'd hug you, but, you know, the whole being naked thing. This family has enough weird incest issues."

Emma started in shock. Miracles, huh?

Hook looked disgustedly at his naked rival and whined, "Why couldn't that crash have blinded me!"

"Why couldn't it have killed you?" retorted Henry. "We can't always get what we want."

"Brat."

"Slut."

"Dork."

"Manwhore."

"Hook, give him your coat," Emma finally found her voice.

"What? No way!"

"Oh, come on!" Neal groaned.

"Your undead bits will touch it and fall off or something and I don't want undead bits soiling my coat!" Hook complained, amending nastily, "What there is of your undead bits, anyway, mate. Might have to get out my spyglass to see your cutlass properly."

Neal glared and hissed out, "It's literally freezing. There is snow on the ground. I am _not_ a zombie. And I will try to tuck my ordinarily larger than average 'bits' back, _mate_. It's not like I want to have any skin-to-leather contact with anything you've been wearing for three hundred years without a wardrobe change. It's probably covered in cum stains and infested with crabs!"

"I would never soil my beloved coat! And crabs would hardly find it a suitable replacement for a shell, _Baelfire_."

"I think he means genital lice," smirked Henry.

Hook sputtered and handed over his coat to a reluctant but shivering Neal.

"I'd hug you, Dad," said Henry cheekily, "but now I'm worried I might get pirate crabs.""Yeah," sighed Neal, "I'll have to get Whale to disinfect me and dose me with antibiotics."

"Oh, nice! You'd better be tucking it both ways, mate!" Hook griped as they headed back to the car.

"Both... what does that even mean?"

"It means I don't want your arse sweat on my coat."

"Fine," said Neal, reaching into the pocket and pulling out a handkercheif. "I'll stick this in between."

"Wha-noooo! That was my brother's!"

Neal smirked and Emma just shoved Hook roughly into the back of the car while Henry sniggered and began gleefully instructing the pirate on everything he'd learned about STDs in health class back in New York.

"So," Emma said, biting her lip. "You're not dead, huh?"

"Apparently," Neal agreed with an awkward nod. "And... ah... stigmata free," he jokingly amended, holding up his hand.

"I NEED MEDICAL ATTENTION, OFFICER!" Hook whined very loudly while banging on the shut window with his stump.

Emma rolled her eyes and cursed under her breath before snapping, "Oh, for the love of - fine!"

After getting in and making sure Neal had put on his seatbelt - he'd always been awful about that - she stepped on the gas while turning sharply so Hook was thrown back, slamming his head against the side window.

"DAMN IT, SWAN!"

* * *

AN: Neal pulled a Rufus! Does this mean Swanfire feels ahead? Or has that ship sunk? Stay tuned!

Next up: Dr. Whale rants.


	22. Jell-O Is For Perverts

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **RIP Alan Rickman. May he get wings and plenty of tequila in Heaven!**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SEVEN**

 **JELL-O IS FOR PERVERTS**

"Everything checks out," Dr. Whale declared, letting Neal up from the bed he'd occupied a few short weeks ago. "Of course, the last time I said that, you dropped dead in the forest a couple of hours later, so... have I mentioned lately how much I hate magic?"

"A couple of days ago after Zelena tried to murder you with magic," said Emma.

"Right. And a couple of days before that when a forest hobo turned into a Flying Monkey and ransacked this very ER... which I had only just repaired before that redheaded psycho witch ransacked this very ER... and in neither case was I am reimbursed for the damages or emotional distress. I am hereby filing a lawsuit against your family and City Hall for this flagrant disregard for public health, safety, the cost of expensive medical equipment destroyed by you magical freaks, and my hair turning prematurely white!"

Emma rolled her eyes as her phone chimed with the Imperial March from Star Wars. "Fine, whatever. I have to take this."

She stepped away, grimacing as she did so, leaving the three men and a teenage boy to continue to behave like children.

"I take offense to being called a freak!" Hook complained from the adjacent bed where he was bleeding through a wad of gauze. "And why does Neal get a full bloody physical while I'm bleeding all over my only set of clothes?"

"I knew it!" Henry crowed. "I knew you only had one!"

"Because I had to trade my ship to a madman to get here to save you and your mum. Which you never thanked me for, I might add."

"Why would I thank my pervert deadbeat step grandfather who wants to shag my mom?"

"Because I reunited you with your family, which is more than Baelfire here did!"

"Hey, I got you the potion and you wouldn't have even known to trade your damn ship and look for Emma if it wasn't for me,!" Neal returned.

"Oh... that was you... I figured it was Emma's parents," Hook played dumb.

"Dude." sighed Henry, "you were there when they said it wasn't them and we all figured out it was my dad. Or were you too busy checking out my mom's butt to pay attention?"

"Well, you can't fault me for that. Swan has some fine tail feathers," he turned to flash a grin at Neal, "am I right, mate?"

"I'm not your 'mate', Hook," Neal stated coolly while pulling on a medical scrubs top. "I may have decided to forgive you for being a douchebag of a step father after you helped rescue Henry and got Emma to Storybrooke with her memories, but I didn't know at the time you sexually assaulted her and then spent the next week pestering her to go out with you like a creepy teenage boy or that you'd stalk her all around town and decide to interpret my forgiveness as a blessing to try and sleep with my kid's mother and turn Henry into your replacement me to work out your weird guilt complex! All of that negates my forgiveness! I thought maybe you'd changed, but you're still a creepy pervert!"

"I am not creepy," Hook muttered, offended and poked at his blue Jell-O.

"Yes you are," Whale interjected, "and having slept with Mary Margaret and then dumped her and then convinced her that because the cursed gynecologist was actually a fishmonger in real life I should deliver her child, thus allowing me to get all up in her vagina with her husband standing right there, I know a creep when I see one."

"Dude," Neal uttered, "what is wrong with you?"

"I brought my brother back from the dead and he murdered my father," said Whale, "and then your father entrapped me in a scheme to fake a botched resurrection of his former lover's daughter's fiancé so she would fall to the Dark Side in despair, after which, years later, when she realized that I'd played her, she ripped me out of my comfy isolated alpine estate where I kept my brother locked up so he wouldn't murder the villagers, and transplanted me into this cursed hell of a town, and then when Pan recast the Curse and she altered it for Henry here, she didn't bother to send me back to my world, so I had to hang out with a bunch of filthy feudal freaks with no indoor plumbing and rancid food for a year - before being brought back to this shithole town just as I was finally on the verge of finding a way home. So now I am stuck here, kissing all your magical booboos while my brother either starved to death long ago or broke out and feasted on all of Switzerland.

"Also, I think I might be gay and the gynecology thing was just a desperate attempt to prove that I was a hot-blooded misogynist like every other man in this town... well... save Jefferson. He's pretty queer, but also bipolar and schizophrenic, and the last time I delivered his meds, he drugged me and quite possibly molested me, because I'm positive my shirt was tucked in when I went into his house.

"Is that explanation enough!?" Whale finished, red-faced, which clashed with his white hair.

"Um... er... that's rough, mate," squeaked Hook, having no real experience with the whole 'gay' thing, other than the time he walked in on two of his crew in the galley, after which he made them walk the plank, because that's just how things were done in his day - but he did feel a bit bad about it, since the ship was far less clean and the food far less edible afterward.

"Anyway," the pirate changed the subject, "are you going to fix me or what?"

Whale sighed and answered, "Let me just get the suture kit."

"Brilliant!"

"Brilliant!" Neal mimicked his accent and threw Liam's handkerchief at the pirate, hitting him in the face.

"Gaaaaaaa! That touched your arse!"

"Yeah, and I wiped my balls with it too," smirked Neal. "Also, I might have blown out a couple of wet farts in your coat."

Henry laughed while Hook glowered at the both of them. "No wonder the Crocodile can't shake his villainy. It must be heredit-OUCH!" he howled as Whale jabbed him in the forehead with a needle of anesthetic.

"Stop squirming!" Whale growled. "How can a murderous pirate be such a damn baby about medical procedures!?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because I come from a time when these fancy machines did not exist and people relied on magical potions to heal their injuries, not bloody needles and getting cut open like fish by what I understand from Tinkerbell is commonly referred as a butt pira-"

Suddenly Hook slumped off unconscious and Whale feigned surprise, "Oh... ooops, I grabbed a surgical sedative by mistake!"

Emma returned to find Hook drooling on his pillow while Whale stitched his forehead and complimented, "You got him to shut up. I didn't think that was possible without a sleeping curse."

"Science has its uses," boasted Whale. "He'll be out for a few hours. I'll call when you can come and collect him."

"Fine," nodded Emma, then she amended, "on second thought, can you just lock him down in the Asylum for a day or two?"

"Oh, sure, just foist him off on Dr. Whale to take care of!"

"Hey, don't blame me!" Emma shot back. "My father's been suspended and I still need to clean the Zelena stank out of the station. I don't know the magical particulars of transforming one's self from a shattered piece of crockery to an incorporeal entity, but it smells like a stink bomb went off in there, and fun as it would be to make Hook inhale that funk, he'd probably end up smelling like it, and he already uses that noxious cologne and uses all of the hot water at the Inn, so he'll make everyone in town sick from his stench while trying to dry hump them. Really, I'm doing you a favor."

"Fine," sighed Whale. "Nurse Ratched would probably enjoy giving him an enema, anyway. Now that woman has anal issues."

As they left Whale to his suturing, Henry mused, "Hey, won't Granny have to evict Hook now that he's been arrested? Grand theft auto is a felony."

"Good point. You can spend the night in the station, Kid."

"What!? You can't do that, Mom!"

"Yes, I can, and I will, and then when Regina makes threats about getting to see you, I'll send you over to stink up her mansion," Emma cheerfully declared, ruffling his hair.

"Doesn't Dad get a say in my punishment?" the boy meekly protested.

"Dad was still dead when you committed the crime. And Dad no longer owns the stolen title to the Bug, I do. Also, I seem to remember Neal being quite fond of the Dutch oven treatment, anyway," said Emma with a raise brow at Neal who rolled his eyes.

"Hey, you kept buying those giant three bean burritos."

"Because we kept getting coupon flyers on the windshield," Emma shot back.

"Speaking of food," Henry interrupted. "Can we at least get lunch first? I've never eaten with both of you guys, before, and the walking and eating pizza with you and Grandpa Gold moping behind us doesn't count."

Emma winced at that. "Oh, fine, emotionally blackmail me, Kid."

"I call shotgun! And I get to use the siren!" Henry proclaimed before jogging toward the exit.

Whale interjected, "Want me to prescribe some Ridlin for that one?"

"Not yet," sighed Emma, "but I'll take the offer under advisement."

She glanced down at Neal's paper surgical slippers as they left the doctor to his suturing and after a moment of thought, set her mind to an image and waved her hand. In a puff of magical smoke, the booties were replaced with the scuffed black shoes from his room.

"You used to have better taste in footwear. And clothes," she stated. "Belle had to take something from your father's closet for your funeral or you'd have been dressed like a hobo."

"I used to steal my clothes," Neal reminded sourly. "Acquiring a wardrobe legitimately on a shitty salary means whatever the thrift store has in my size. I spent eight years taking off the books sketchy jobs while waiting for a statute of limitations for a felony to run out. And being thirty with a junior high education and zero references doesn't exactly inspire management level. Or did you not see my apartment and observe it meant I didn't have a lot going on?"

Before Emma could comment, Neal amended, "Apparently, the lack there of meant you didn't even bother to go box up my stuff, but you gave my keys to Regina to let her lover and his fake wife who was my murderer shack up there free of charge and fuck in my bed. So, thanks for that."

Emma winced, then stopped and realized in dismay, "You know about the other timeline."

"Yeah," Neal nodded, "I know about the other timeline. And I know you lost your soul and I know that you was a warped version of you like everyone's cursed selves here, but that was still them and that was still you."

He shook his head. "I know you wished me here, and I'm grateful that, Emma, that you wanted me to have a second chance. And I do love you, I know I always will, but... given everything that's happened, the person you became and what that says about who you were already becoming before we met again in New York..."

"You don't want a second chance at us," Emma concluded, her throat closing up. "I thought... I thought maybe God had answered my... wish and we could... could finally get that coffee and..."

"Hey," Neal sighed, laying a hand on her arm. "I wasn't expecting I'd get a second chance like this, and in a perfect world, if we could have started over from the beginning, that's all I'd have wanted, to never have left you, to raise our son together, to face all of this as the team we used to be, Bonnie and Clyde, but... that's not how this works, and with all of the crap that happened in that other timeline, it's just..."

"Too painful," she finished again and laughed morosely. "Never thought what I said in Neverland would come back around and bite me in the ass."

Frowning, Emma amended, "I am sorry for saying that I wished you were dead. I didn't mean it literally. I just... it was easier not to deal with that hope and having it crushed again after those months in prison, hoping there had been a mistake and you'd be waiting for me only for those keys to show up from Thailand and realize you'd spent the money on a sex vacation."

"Yeah, kinda wish I'd gotten the opportunity to punch August for that. And kinda upset you declared him your best friend since Lily, like I was chopped liver," Neal reminded.

"Because you were more than just a friend. And I was just trying to keep Hook from being a jealous prick and making everything about him again," Emma tried to explain, then winced, "which doesn't really help my case, does it?

"I know that I hurt you with my choices, Neal," she sighed. "And I know I don't have the excuse that I thought it was what you wanted or needed. I hurt Henry. I used and then ignored and then conspired with your father to do something awful that involved lying to Belle again. I tainted the momentos of our past together to try and destroy that dream that could never happen, to make it easier to move on with the future I was clinging to so desperately in some twisted, screwed up attempt to keep my promise to you - and in doing so I turned the things I could have shared with Henry to feel like he knew you into nightmare reminders of how I used him, how I became just as bad as the woman he found me to save him from.

"I should have been strong enough to save you," she sniffled. "I should have done something to change things when I went back in time, or when I went to the Underworld. I told myself that it would be wrong to take away you're dying a hero... and then I went after Hook. I don't expect you to forgive my hypocrisy. I didn't think I could forgive you for leaving, saying it was the best thing, and I know it was a lot of that... anger that made me not choose you, which I'm not trying to say is your fault, because it's not."

Emma shook her head with regret. "I have no one but myself to blame for my bullshit justifications when I _knew_ that being a father would obviously have been what you wanted more than some stupid 'heroic death' that hardly even counted as that when we all let Zelena live and ignored your father's back-slide into darkness. You died for nothing and I wouldn't give you a second chance for all kinds of stupid reasons that I regret. We were supposed to be together, you were supposed to have my back and keep me from getting... brainwashed by all of this fairy tale stuff, but maybe I wanted to be, because it was easier than reality, than life with rules and consequences and accountability.

"So... I'm sorry," Emma repeated. "I'm sorry that I was a coward, and I'm sorry for how you suffered because of my fear and selfishness. And I'm sorry... I'm sorry that I've fucked up Tallahassee for both of us."

Neal let out a sigh and told her, "Look, Emma, that stuff hurt, I won't deny that, but I know I hurt you too. And I was a coward for leaving you _and_ for using dark magic to try to get back to you. You're right that my death wasn't heroic, but not just some ad hoc sense. It just _wasn't_ heroic. I was already dead the moment I turned that key."

"But I could have saved you," she cried.

"But we both knew you couldn't have," he shook his head. "That wall around your heart... it wasn't gonna let me in, not even then. You just said that. And I knew it. I knew I was a complication you weren't ready to face, so we weren't gonna get that chance, I wasn't gonna get the time to be patient, to hope that you'd heal from all of that accumulated crap and get that coffee. You weren't ready and I ran out of time."

"I'm ready now. And we're both here..."

"Are you really?" Neal countered, "cause deciding you want to be with someone after being guilt tripped and tortured by assholes doesn't exactly count as therapy, Emma. Near as I can tell, that's how you've done things your whole life. Someone treats you like shit and you decide that makes them worth your while. Maybe you got messed up as a little kid, that the only attention you got was shitty, so something got wired wrong in how you look at love. Maybe people who treat you right scare you 'cause you think they'll dump your ass like the Swans. But people who use you and abuse you and make you feel like shit and responsible for them treating you like shit, there's something safe and familiar in that fucked up situation, cause they need you, whether it's that Ingrid wackjob needing you to replace her sister or Hook needing you to replace my mom."

Emma swallowed thickly and averted her eyes at Neal's pop psychology assessment. He ran a hand through his hair and amended, "You _are_ still that orphan, Emma. I don't mean it in a bad way, just... it's who you are and you never dealt with that. You're like all of Pan's Lost Boys that he picked from abusive families, who were desperate to be needed and useful to someone, even if that someone treated them even worse than their parents and only needed them to stroke his ego and take the blame for his failures, and just be an outlet for his rage, a punching bag that would take it and apologize for bleeding on his shoes.

"You giving half your heart to Hook wasn't all that different from Felix giving his heart to Pan," Neal surmised with a grimace. "Both were based on something that wasn't real love, that was just being the victim of a narcissistic psychopath who was able to twist the increasingly broken laws of magic to bend to their _self-love_. You weren't being loyal or saving anyone and like mine, your sacrifice wasn't heroic and didn't amount to anything."

"So... you're saying we're both pathetic idiots with parental issues?" Emma laughed despondently.

"Something like that," Neal told her with a shrug. "I wouldn't have left you in Portland - or proposed to a woman I barely knew to pretend I was moving on and happy and had no regrets for leaving you if my childhood hadn't messed me up. My last memory of my mother was seeing her make-out with the man who ultimately sold me out to a child abuser. My last memory of my father at that point was him choosing power over me.

"I never exactly had the best self esteem, and falling in love with some savior princess? Believing I could be that lucky... I chose to believe all the worst parts of that: being reunited with my father going horribly wrong, you finding out the truth and telling me to fuck off, because I was the catalyst for your life being destroyed, because I lied to you for months, because you had an amazing destiny and royalty in your future while I was a peasant relic from the past who was meant to die in a war centuries ago."

"After how I grew up, everything we shared," Emma countered, "you really believed I'd think I was better than you and everything was your fault? That I would leave you?"

"It's kinda the story of my life," Neal pointed out. "And you kind of did."

"That's not fair. Just because I reacted one way a decade later doesn't mean I would have back then, Neal," Emma argued. "I _loved_ you. I would have done _anything_ to be with you. Stealing those watches should have proven that. You think I really believed your name was 'Neal Cassidy' and you were really from New Jersey? But I didn't care, because you were my best friend, _you_ were home, and I thought you felt the same about me, that you didn't care if I was a delinquent nobody high school dropout whose parents left for dead by the side of the road and was only ever wanted by a lunatic who believed in magic."

"Who made me all the more less likely to tell you the truth."

Emma's shoulders slumped. "I didn't remember that, though. Ingrid took my memories. Maybe... maybe that's why I could never figure out how to talk to you. Those memories... they were tied to so much of who we were together, and without them..."

Neal sighed. "Yeah maybe."

After a pause, he smiled sadly. "I _did_ love you, Emma. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and until finding out I had a son, you were my happy memory. Thinking about you, about what we shared, and hoping you'd find your family and your happy ending... that made those old nightmares of my father and Neverland bearable. Memories of you, my hope for you, that was my real dreamcatcher."

"And I screwed that up," Emma sniffled. "I didn't find happiness, I made my family worse, and I ruined those memories for us - for Henry."

"You weren't the only one responsible for that," Neal insisted. "And you were in a shitty situation, cut up into pieces of you from your parents spell to your soul and your heart. You kept giving away pieces of yourself to try and do the right thing. And, yeah, most of the time it wasn't, and some of that is on you. But you paid your dues for that, Emma, you passed those trials and you're here. _Whole_. Maybe don't be so quick to try giving up what you just got back? You got your heart, your soul, and your dark potential which you've got in pretty good check from what I can tell. That's something to be proud of. And it's a good place to start working on healing from all that crap, that baggage you've been carrying around your whole life.

"I know I've got a lot to sort through myself," he said and offered with a smile, "And I wouldn't be here if I didn't still mean what I said in Neverland: that I'll always fight for you. I've got your back here, Em. No matter what."

It was impulsive, and she didn't know if he'd reciprocate or not, or be offended, but Emma took a quick step forward and wrapped arms around Neal's waist, hugging him tightly and uttering, "Don't leave me again."

Neal was still for a moment before returning her embrace, burying his nose in her hair. "I never left you, Em. I was always there. You just... didn't want to believe."

Emma hiccuped at that and sniffled again before pulling away and wiping at her eyes. "I was never great at my family's optimism. Sorry about that."

"S'okay, I knew you'd let me go," Neal told her with a tight smile. "I knew you wouldn't want to hold onto that pain."

"Because pain is love and I'm afraid of love," sighed Emma, "because I never really had it without being afraid that it wouldn't last. You're right. My childhood fucked me up big time."

"Well lucky for you," Neal chuckled, his smile turning wry, "so did pretty much everyone's in this whole damn town, which is why they are all a bunch of assholes-"

"That I'm supposed to save," Emma harumphed.

The loud scream of a police siren suddenly cut through the ER and Emma pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed, "While somehow keeping Henry from turning into one."

* * *

AN: Poor Whale! (His sexuality and Jefferson's was inspired by another story, It's Always Sunny In Storybrooke.) Did you catch the _Seinfeld_ reference, anyone? On the Emma/Neal front, sorry to those who were hoping for some slow motion jogging on a beach and passionate reunion kiss. It was just too cliché, and Emma and Neal are the only not cliché couple on the show. They both hurt each other badly, and that's not something that even dying can erase. If there's hope fore Swanfire here, it's not going to be instant or easy, but they will be allies in the cause.

Next up: Onion rings.


	23. Grilled Cheese & Onion Rings

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Brownie points for eleven19 (the wonderful author of "It's Always Sunny in Storybrooke") who was first getting the _Seinfeld_ untucked shirt at the Dentist reference! (** **ravenclaw312 was a close second).  
**

 **Note to Mir: Don't worry, I am fluent in Autocorrect. Poor Dr. Whale. Should I write him in a boyfriend? Hook will have some embarrassing problems to deal with for awhile, making him more-or-less comic relief (with little character to growth to show for it at this point). Henry may have a tougher mom in Emma now, but Regina is no slouch, nor is she an idiot when it comes to Emma's change in behavior, which will cause problems for Emma and her reaffirmed intention to be a good parent. In some respects, the revelations about Emma's alternate life will reboot things to the beginning of Season 2 in the dynamics between her and other characters, but with the Season 5 spin of Emma being the one on the outside looking in, a more pronounced feeling of not fitting in that's more like Regina felt in Season 2 than just Emma's initial "I don't know how to deal with my crazy family because I never had one and it conflicts with my defense mechanism to never get close to anyone". Emma's going to be stuck with both while trying to sort out some kind of God Squad partnership with Neal and figuring out how to resolve the various threats to Storybrooke this time around without destroying reality as they know it, i.e. carefully navagating Rumple's sage advice to Henry in "Manhattan" that just because you know something is going to happen, doesn't mean you know what's going to happen!**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER EIGHT**

 **GRILLED CHEESE & ONION RINGS**

"But grilled cheese and onion rings are your favorite," Henry uttered in confusion as Emma pushed the plate toward him.

"I'm just not hungry," she insisted, which wasn't exactly true, she just didn't feel like she could keep anything down, her stomach in knots since _undying_ and only seeming to get worse as one frustration piled up on top of another before she had a chance to even breath.

She was supposed to be breathing now, indulging in a happy moment with her son and his father, but Emma couldn't focus on Henry's animated recounting of his year in New York or Neal's questions about this and that place when what amounted to him basically preemptively dumping her kept cycling through her mind.

It was selfish, she knew, to be so heartbroken by what she'd caused and then wallow in the self-pity instead of being happy that Neal was alive and Henry had his father back in his life. She _was_ happy about that, it was just that her happiness for her son was muted by her disappointment.

Her life seemed to be defined by false highs and true lows. Shouldn't she have learned that by now? So it had been foolish to think that Neal falling out of the sky meant a slow motion, open-armed jog on the beach and cello music and grand romantic declarations. That was the sappy, cliché, shallow nonsense that had defined her mess of a romance with Killian, all threats and promises that were quickly broken, because there was really never anything deeper, no foundation to crack beyond repair, no genuine affection more nuanced than lust and fear of loneliness kept at bay by epic adventures and mortal peril. Things with Neal had always been _real life,_ dreams of simple pleasures with the ordinary and lasting disappointments that a rose and flowery words couldn't fix.

Her romance with Hook had been legendary, but legends were full of exaggeration, revisionist history, and outright lies.

Her romance with Neal had been ordinary, and it was in that ordinaryness that there was nothing but truth. A truth that hurt now more than it ever had.

Before, she could tell herself it wouldn't have worked for numerous reasons that could never be proved or disproved, and there was a strange comfort in that not knowing. There was no comfort in being told that even after facing her inner demons, her deepest flaws, and begging forgiveness for the grievous mistakes she'd made because of them, she couldn't be forgiven _enough_.

Being on the other end of that really _really_ sucked.

Suddenly, Emma felt as though she was on the verge of hyperventilating, the futility and unfairness of it all coupled with the responsibilities too much to bare!

She quickly excused herself "to the bathroom", her statement barely even acknowledged by father and son, and hurried left to the laundry room and then out the back door to the alley where the air was crisp and damp _and she was alone_.

Emma threw up the three onion rings she'd eaten, then closed the lid on the garbage can and fought to keep from breaking down into hysterical tears.

She knew she had to get her shit together. Additional angelic visits were probably unlikely, and would just make her feel like an even bigger loser, that she couldn't handle this.

 _"Just do it already,"_ someone muttered nearby, interrupting Emma's panic attack.

Suddenly there was a bright green flash and a roaring sound around the corner, in the side ally where she'd once found Kathryn Nolan with Ruby standing over her.

This time it was Ruby dressed like she was going to a Renaissance Fair - or the Enchanted Forest - clinging to a downspout as a portal opened up in a pothole.

"HELP!" the werewolf waitress yelled as the pipe began to break.

Emma reached out, trying to use magic to pull Ruby back, but the pull was too strong. Thinking quickly, she used her other hand to direct the nearest parked car into the portal, which was enough to satisfy it.

As the portal closed, Ruby slumped her knees, shaking.

Emma rushed over and crouched down. "Ruby, what the hell was that!?"

Sniffling, the younger woman explained, "Mary Margaret gave me a magic bean at the party yesterday. She said she found it in Regina's office - from the plant she stole. She wanted me to use it."

"What!? What the hell for!?"

"To... well... find myself," said Ruby, allowing Emma to help her up.

"Um... I'm not following."

"I don't feel like I fit in anymore, like I _matter_ here," Ruby tried to explain. "We were best friends, but Snow never talks to me anymore. I tried at the party, you remember, to say how I was part of their story! But your parents just brushed me off and went back to gushing over their perfect love, their new baby, yadda yadda yadda. So, after you went off in huff - the first time - I told her, you know, that I wasn't feeling included, that I felt out of place. She said maybe I needed to look into my roots more, find other werewolves in the Enchanted Forest if there weren't any here. And she gave me the magic bean."

Emma groaned and rubbed her temples. She'd just assumed that Ruby had been off with Mulan beyond the reach of her mother's curse. This was... _shit_ , one more thing to yell at her mother about! She knew Mary Margaret or Snow or whatever the fuck the woman wanted to go by on any given day had meant well, but _portals were important_. This was not a 'finders keepers' situation! Magic beans were community property, something Emma thought was made _abundantly clear_ by Regina burning the field to the ground out of spite for her parents _not_ telling anyone that they were hoarding them to use at their own discretion without consulting anyone about the executive decision they were planning to make to drag everyone back to the Enchanted Forest without a say in the matter - which ended up happening thanks to Pan, but it was still relevant!

"Ruby," Emma told the waitress, "my mother is an idiot. I don't know why or how it happened. Maybe it's the head injuries, baby brain, heart-splitting, or a combination, but she's lost so many IQ points since Neverland that I wouldn't trust her to pet sit a gold fish, honestly, let alone raise my brother or run a town - which is a whole different set of worrying issues I have to deal with. But _least of all_ is taking her advice. Nine out of ten times the wisdom she's given me has blown up in my face and made my life worse. I love her, but she's kind of a dumbshit. And handing off public property like candy, _very important safety measure public property_ , is just added proof of that!"

"I know," Ruby said, looking ashamed. "That's why I was reluctant to use it. I'm just tired of being ignored. I thought... maybe I had a thing with Victor after we sort of bonded last year over the monster thing, when that Greg creep was dying, but he said he didn't feel the same way, and now that the Curse is broken, I don't want to take over a dumpy inn and diner no matter how much it means to me that Granny would trust me with it. I just... feel like a... a..."

"Supernumerary?" Emma suggested.

"Super-what-inary?"

"Background character in a script not important enough to have a name like 'slutty waitress'," said Emma, amending, "Sorry, August really got in my head."

"The little ginger brat who stole my tips right out of my apron?" questioned Ruby, then she snorted. "Yeah, that's me then. I mean, I sometimes wonder if Snow even remembers I have an _actual_ name instead of just 'Red' or 'Ruby'."

"Red's not your name?" uttered Emma, surprised and the brunet rolled her eyes.

"Of course not! What kind of a name is 'Red'?"

"What kind of a name is 'Snow White'?" Emma countered. "How the hell should I know?"

"Yes, well, everyone called me that because of the red cloak I wore to not turn into a werewolf as long as anyone can remember," explained Ruby in a huff. "Plus, I think Granny hates that my mother named me, and 'Eustance' is a crappy name. But it's _still_ my name!"

Emma smiled at that. "I hear you. I wasn't thrilled with being named by a blanket given to me by people who dumped by the side of a road - or a family that sent me back to the Group Home because I didn't measure up to the kids of their own they were having. But it's _still_ my name. And names matter."

"Yeah, Rumplestiltskin would say they have power," Ruby nodded. "Which is maybe your mom's problem, since she doesn't seem to know what the frig to call herself! Your whole family needs to go to Archie, you know? You're kind of all selfish jerks with some kind of magical fiasco related bipolar disease!"

"Yeah, we kind of are a bunch of assholes," Emma agreed. "I'm sorry about that."

"Yeah, well, I _did_ eat my boyfriend... though that's also kind of entirely Snow's fault for deciding based on half-heard conversations that Peter was the Wolf. She was always kind of dumb," sighed Ruby, "but being good at shooting things and talking smack to Regina made up for it back then. Not so much in small town Maine, especially now that Regina isn't so big on the mass murdering, and it's frowned upon to disembowel and feast on your enemies. _Not_ that I was into that," she quickly amended.

"So find better and smarter friends in this small town," advised Emma just as Tinkerbell came wandering into the alley toward the Inn looking hung-over... which was an odd state considering she was dressed in nun clothes.

"What happened to you?" asked Emma.

"Blue Bitch kicked me out," complained Tinkerbell. "I thought I'd make a second go with the order when we all ended up back in the Enchanted Forest. I really had to beg, like really ingratiate myself to that horrible overlord to get another chance to prove that I wasn't a delinquent waste of magic. And I get _one_ infraction in a year and I'm out!"

"What did you do?" Ruby inquired.

"Told Nova to stop being a brainwashed minion in a world that doesn't operate by our old rules and go the hell out with that Dwarf already if she really wanted to."

"You got kicked out for telling someone it was okay to go on a date?"

"No, I got an hour lecture for telling someone to go on a date. And another hour lecture on the use of names, because we are all colors, not names, which makes us different and better than humans," scoffed Tink. "That's when I punched her."

"You punched the Blue Fairy in the face!?" Emma exclaimed.

"No, I punched her in her fake boobs," Tinkerbell stated proudly, "and they _popped_! I knew she'd been using magic. No one has cleavage like that, not even fairies. Anyway, _that's_ when she kicked me out, so now I'm broke, unemployed, wardrobeless _and_ homeless!"

"No, you're not!" Ruby assured. "Well, unemployed, at least. I just quit my waitressing job. I don't want it back. And I'm sure Granny can front your first paycheck toward room money until you can save up enough for a place."

"Really?" Tinkerbell uttered, startled, "you'd really help me like that?"

"Of course. I remember when that snotty fairy publicly insulted you at the diner in front of everyone for no reason. I'm sure Granny will too, and anyone the woman hates is okay in my Gran's book - and mine!"

"I thought everyone loved and respected Ruel Ghorm," the once more former fairy said, confused.

"No, that's just fear and good acting," said Ruby. "Well, back in the Enchanted Forest it was fear, what with all of her powerful magical size-changing, flying swarm of wand-waving bitches and the mystery factor. Here, though, her magic is pretty weak and she won't even use it to help any of us in a crisis. Did she come to my aide when the town was trying to kill me after I was framed for murderer? She could have waved her wand and frozen that mob, but instead, apparently, she believed I did it, because I'm a werewolf, and we're all innately evil or some shit!"

"Yeah, she's big on stereotypes," agreed Tinkerbell.

"Tell me about it!" Ruby snorted and linked arms with the blonde.

"Come on, I'll get you an application."

Having faded into the background of the interaction, Emma followed the bisexual werewolf and slutty ex-fairy back into the diner, hoping something good had come out of a wasted magic bean. Ruby wasn't right for Mulan, quite honestly, and Mulan would only get her heart broken by the brave but morally ambiguous werewolf who would never live up to the warrior's code of honor. But Tinkerbell? Yeah, Emma could see the pair, both outcasts from their 'species' and among humans being a good match.

"BAELFIRE!? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?"

Of course, Tink would be fired from waitressing in a New York minute with her filthy mouth...

Neal was coming out of the men's room and startled at Tinkerbell's shriek before the ex-fairy mobbed him.

"What didn't you tell me you were alive!? How are you alive!? Why didn't _you_ tell me!?" she accused Emma.

"Slipped my mind?" Emma replied with an uncomfortable shrug and Tinkerbell rolled her eyes.

"Well, you made my day, Bae!" Tink beamed. "That and punching Blue in the tits! You should have seen them pop! There was so much blue glitter you'd think it was New Years Eve!"

"Ah... congratulations?" Neal croaked out. "It's good to see you too, Tink. Thanks for coming to my funeral."

"You know it, kiddo," she nodded. "I can't speak for most of the useless assholes around here who had better things to do, but you got a raw deal and even if you weren't part of this town for long, you deserved more than that pathetic excuse for a memorial. _I_ wanted to do a whole brass band thing, but I got shot down over the whole Wicked Witch thing, so don't blame me for the shitty service they couldn't even be bothered to hold in a church, which is apparently some sort of hallowed ground in this world, not that you'd know it, since no one ever goes there, but then since it's run by Blue Boobs, I can't blame them..."

"Yeah... don't worry, Tink," Neal assured, "you're off the hook for the crap turnout and frozen pizza bagels."

Emma winced at the interaction and felt compelled after Ruby had snagged Tinkerbell away with an application to apologized, "I did want to do more for your funeral. But your father was still in a cage and with Zelena... I know those are crappy excuses. I didn't even look at what the funeral home was going to put on your headstone and then there just wasn't time to add anything, and I got preoccupied-"

"Yeah, picking out Hook's big fancy headstone that made mine look like a shitty donation," Neal muttered, which drew another wince from Emma.

"There really isn't anything I can say, is there?" she sighed and he shrugged. "I was coming here, you know? For that coffee. I wanted it to be a good memory."

"So did I," Neal exhaled. "I wasn't trying to hit on you, Emma. I just... I wanted to talk, to _finally_ talk, about all of it or none of it."

"I know," she sniffed. "I know that now. I think I was just so caught up on what could have been, and with Hook's relentless romantic pursuit and your fighting with him over me in Neverland-"

"Because he took my mother away and he sold me out to Pan and he was only after you out of some sick generational fetish not because he cared about Henry. And you deserved better. Or, at least, I thought you did," Neal explained, hands in his pockets.

 _Ouch_ , that last one hurt. "You could have told me about Milah," Emma argued.

"You still hated me. It wouldn't have mattered. And that would have been worse," said Neal, "if you'd known before and still fell in love with him. I'm not sure I could've forgiven that. To be honest, Em, I'm still working on forgiving you for staying with him, _sharing your heart with him_ , after you did," he concluded honestly.

"I understand," Emma managed. "I don't know how to forgive myself either. I don't think I ever will. I've made so many mistakes that I can't fix."

She looked into the diner where Henry was eating an ice cream sundae and playing something on his phone.

"I missed every single year of his life," Emma uttered brokenly. "Sometimes I hate myself that I didn't have the courage to stand by him."

Letting out a breath, she continued, "These fake memories just make it worse, you know? They're always there as a reminder, taunting me 'this is what could have been' even if I know it would never have been like that, which makes it worse, because I can't help thinking how it would have been different, the mother I would have been, the person I could have been with Henry in my life. So I pushed him away, I pushed that love away, for him, for you, for all of those 'what ifs' and focused on an obsession, a distraction."

Emma shook her head. "But I could never escape it, the not knowing."

"I know," Neal sympathized. "You can't slay regrets with a sword or magically poof them away - without forgetting the love that created them, anyway. They end up haunting you, barring the doors to paths you could have taken, happy endings you could have had."

Emma let out a self-depricating laugh and considered, "For Henry, when he showed up on my doorstep, his purpose was uncovering the mysteries of magic and fairy tales and I was there when he did and that meant a lot, but my mysteries, I'll never have the answer."

Neal ran a hand over his face and sighed. "Finding out I had a son," he told Emma, "coming to Storybrooke... everyone was embroiled in all kinds of magical nonsense, in heroes and villains, legends and epic adventures, but all I wanted was to know my son, to know how he grew up, if he was ever happy, and if I'd been there... if I'd made a different choice, if I'd been stronger... And all of it lead me to make a really stupid choice, a choice I still can't believe I made out of that desperation to have that one thing I'd always wanted _for three hundred years_."

"We can still have that, some part of it, can't we?" Emma tearfully asked. "I know a lot of time has passed, Neal. I know there's a lot of pain at both ends. And I can't deny that I came out of prison, after giving up my baby, different, colder, closed off... but death... that showed me that I don't want to be that version of me anymore. The one who isn't afraid of anything. I don't think people really change. We're both still... the people we were back then in Portland that dreamed of Tallahassee, they're still somewhere inside of us, aren't they? If we could just... dig through all of the bullshit we've piled on since, we could find that love, that innocence. We could be happy. I want to believe that forgiveness is possible, for both of us. That there's still hope."

"There's always hope where there's love," Neal admitted, squeezing her hand and he leaned over and placed a kiss on her forehead to punctuate the point.

Pulling away, he said with a slightly watery smile, "Now, let's go take our juvenile delinquent to jail."

Emma wiped her eyes with her sleeve and nodded. Henry was finishing his last spoonful when they returned to the booth and she managed to not sound too nasally as she told him, "Come on kid, you still gotta do the time for the crime."

"You're not going to cuff me, are you?" Henry sighed.

"You'd just pick the lock anyway," Emma shrugged, "which is why I'm using _magic_ at the station."

"Grrrrrr arrrrgh," was the teen's lament. "Why does everyone in this family have magic but me?"

"Hey, I don't have magic," Neal pointed out. "Neither do Emma's parents. Or Belle. Or Robin."

"Forest Hobo doesn't count," Henry scoffed on the way out the front steps. "I'm embarrassed that Robin Hood was my childhood fairy tale hero. I mean, I love my mom, even though she's a murderer, _because she's my mom_. It's like... I'm psychologically incapable of not loving her since she raised me. But who keeps dating the woman who murdered their wife, their kid's _mom_?"

"I'm pretty sure Robin is unaware of that," said Neal.

"Yeah, but he was totally aware my mom is a mass murderer who's killed children, had like zero interaction with her after her rehab to be a better person so all he knew was the Evil Queen and her heart crushing, but he took one look at her boobs in a corset and decided he totally wanted to tap that ass! That's not a code of honor, that's _messed up, man!_ No wonder Mulan only stayed with the Merry Men for like a day. What is _wrong_ with grown-ups?"

"People make all kinds of bad decisions in love, Henry," Emma uncomfortably answered, aware her own choices were not that different from Robin's. "Sometimes... you just can't control who you love, even when you know it's wrong, and some.. some people are stronger than others at picking what's right over what their heart tells them they need."

She glanced awkwardly at Neal who thankfully had his attention elsewhere, on a bearded Dwarf gaping at the now extremely large pothole in the alley.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO MY CAR!?"

* * *

AN: The Dwarfs always get shafted. Emma's monologue about not raising Henry is taken from Scully's lamentation to Mulder on giving up their son William shown in _The X-Files: Re-Opened._ It only just occurred to me while watching _Fringe_ that the chapter in which Emma finds her soul as a child after searching a group home was inspired by Olivia finding her child self in the cortexifan experiment in "Jacksonville". I really miss that show!

Next up: Regina needs a designated driver, Mary Margaret needs some tissues, Henry needs earplugs, and Hook needs one of those donut pillows!


	24. The Pirate of No Pants

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER NINE**

 **THE PIRATE OF NO PANTS**

An afternoon that in another world was spent cooing over a baby, making out like teenagers, illicitly cheating on one's wife, and secretly hoarding magical artifacts had taken a turn.

Well, somewhat of a turn. Rumplestiltskin was still toting around a magical hatbox, but the rest of Storybrooke's most self-centered residents had seen an unperturbed past adding complications to their present day lives.

For instance, Henry Mills was now not spending the afternoon lamenting his newborn uncle being named after the dead father he barely knew, his mother's moodiness over her new boyfriend's wife turning up alive, and his other mother's previous evening of making out with a dirty pirate like a paid prostitute at the docks on a Saturday night.

Instead, Henry was sitting in a stinky jail cell, magically sealed in by his mother. He was also sharing the station with his scurvy nemesis after Dr. Whale had called Emma and demanded she take the pirate off his hands after Hook puked all over Whale's new white coat and wouldn't stop shouting "Swaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!" Apparently, Hook had a bad reaction to the sedative after Nurse Ratched decided to follow up that enima with a colonoscopy.

So, now the pirate was curled up in fetal position in the adjacent cell complaining "that bitch of a nurse" had "raped him in the arse!" He'd gone on in a semi-lucid state about how it was hardly fair punishment for all of the wenches he'd "docked in the aft" so as not to "sow his devilishly handsome seed" as he was just being practical. This was followed by observations on the Evil Queen having a sizable booty he'd have liked to plunder if he wasn't otherwise taken by the "fair Princess Emma" and "the way those pants are painted on her sweet round bum the way Milah used to wear her leathers!"

Henry was certain he'd need serious therapy after tonight.

"Myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy buuuuuummmmmmm!" Hook cried. "The wench ruuuuuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiiined my buuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmm!"

"SHUT UP!" yelled Henry before pulling his pillow over his head.

He was never borrowing anyone's car ever again. It wasn't worth this torture!

* * *

Regina Mills' sizable booty was planted on a stool at Granny's while her red-painted lips were affixed to a glass of scotch being served by a newly employed Tinkerbell who was being quite uppity about her point proven that Regina had ruined lives.

Oh, sure, Robin had a good thing going with a wife he loved and a son, but now he'd fallen in love with Marian's murderer. Of course, the pathetic thing was that Henry had been right in his assessment that Robin was cool with this revelation, more than willing to let an execution slide, what with being so long ago.

The thing was, apart from that being a bit unsettling, "so long" actually amounted to only two years for him, since he was trapped in Cora's stasis spell during the 28 years of the Dark Curse, which really had left Regina questioning the morals and intelligence of her so-called true love.

As the Evil Queen, she would have been totally down with an adulterous dirtbag who shrugged off his wife's murder for her killer. That showed a callous disregard for human decency that she'd valued in her allies and lovers. Unfortunately, it really did seem to be less maliciousness and more stupidity in Robin's case. That pixie dust cloud seemed to have been dispersed by Emma's rather vicious character assassination attempt, and now Regina was looking over the past week as well as the few interactions with Robin in the Enchanted Forest without those rose-colored glasses of lust and fanciful fate foolishness.

Really, what kind of man declared that he had heard of the Evil Queen and all of her atrocities but announced he did not see such qualities in her... when, really, the only thing he saw was her heaving breasts, because they'd only just met, which was hardly long enough to judge anyone's ethical standings. _And_ it had taken her _decades_ to get over Daniel's death. Even setting dark magic aside, she'd moped in her castle apartments for a good several years before even considering the idea of trying to move on- and deciding she didn't want some glittery bitch telling her when to stop grieving!

But Robin? He didn't really seem to love Marian at all. And in spite of his tale of stealing from the Dark One to save his unborn son, he was always foisting Roland off on his Merry Men, unless it was to buy the kid ice cream from that creepy blonde woman who somehow got people to buy her overly-fatty treats in the middle of winter. He acted more like a man who was relieved his wife had died and was grudgingly putting up with Roland as though, had Regina not been more than willing to adopt a child not of her blood, he'd pull a stunt like the pirate's old man and just abandon the tike one day in favor of true love.

Plus, he really did only have that _one_ expression that Henry equated to that hillbilly character on _The Simpsons_.

"Why would Destiny have saddled me with an imbecile before I was evil? When I could have chosen a good path?" Regina asked, or that's how it sounded in her head. In actual words it was extremely slurred and sounded more like, "Wyyyyyyyyed distnyfaddled maidoon imsool boofuriz elfl?"

Thankfully, Tinkerbell could translate Regina's inebriated query after decades becoming fluent in Drunk Pirate.

"Because Destiny knew you would choose evil," the ex-fairy responded. "Ipso facto, your punishment is a doofus. It was my bad for trying to set you two up earlier than Fate had decreed. I see that now. The Blue Fairy was right that I shouldn't have interfered. Which doesn't mean I regret punching her in the tits. She still had that coming."

"Heeeheee teeeeeets!" Regina giggled. "Ife niiiiiiiiiiize teeeeeeeeeeets. Rubeeen luuuuuuuuuuufs ma tee...ta... tatas!"

"Jeez, woman," sighed Tinkerbell, "it's not even happy hour yet and you are _wasted_. Should I call Henry to drive you home?"

"Naaaaaaaaa funneeee! Iza durty peerots fald!"

"Of course it is," Tinkerbell agreed. "But you have to admit, your kid did the crime. He has to do the time. I mean, if he hadn't been stuck in Pandora's Box by Pan, I've had locked his dumb ass up in it for giving that psychotic shite his heart!"

Regina let out a sigh. "Puuuuuur Hanree godiz gramutter's brawns."

"Yeah, and you got your grandfather's liver the way you're drinking," said Tinkerbell. "Seriously, I am calling you a cab."

Despite the offense at having to take public transportation, Regina nodded, then inquired, only just noticing, "Wh- _hic_ -erez Ooobee?"

* * *

Ruby was just down and across the street. After some 'getting fucked over by the nobles and magic-wielders' sympathy from Tinkerbell, the werewolf had marched over to The Charmings' loft to accuse them of trying to get rid of the complication of their friendship just like they tried to get rid of the complication of raising a kid that could make mistakes and that many-mistake-having-made kid so they could make another one, until that hopefully perfect spawn's fate was threatened.

The list of Ruby's accusations went on toward evening, an accumulated list going back to the Enchanted Forest and all of the psychological trauma she now had to deal with - major PTSD - from all the people she had to maul to death to save her "friends" whenever they undertook ill-conceived missions without any other backup and zero scouts, something a _fairy_ might have come in handy for.

Also, David was a shitty Sheriff for letting George go after murdering Billy and doing nothing to stop the anti-anthropomorphic human discrimination in town, plus the duties of a Sheriff did not include an 'executive decision' to force everyone back to the Enchanted Forest _or_ letting everyone fend for themselves after Hook's treachery and Regina's Ring Pop of Doom sidelined that idea... which led into a whole treaties on how they were actually shitty rulers compared to Regina and George who, for all of their evil dictator shit, didn't try to pretend they were beneficent when screwing over peasants in favor of family bullshit.

By the time Ruby was finished, David's post-suspension day drinking had turned into a bender that rivaled Regina's drunken stupor and Mary Margaret was crying right along with Baby Something-Other-Than-Neal.

"... and in closing, our friendship is over!"

And thus the front door slammed hard, Baby Something-Other-Than-Neal wailed even louder, and David grouched, "For the love of Merlin's balls, Mary Margaret, will you shut that thing up!?"

"That _thing_ is our son!" the brunet shouted back. "AND STOP CALLING ME MARY FUCKING MARGARET!"

Outside the window her shriek scattered a small flock of blue birds that might have been people who were turned into parrots who were masquerading as blue birds. Who can say for sure what they were, just that only an idiot would identify them as blue birds. Finches, possibly, but _blue birds_? Charles Darwin would come back from the dead and smite such a self-described nature lover down if someone were to create a portal to The Underworld. Thankfully, no one was doing any _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ cosplay with mystical weaponry this particular evening, so _Snow White_ was spared.

David, however, would be sleeping in his truck.

* * *

And so it was the Mr. Gold finally woke from taking a late morning post-dagger-switching Ambien as though the shrill Princess' voice had carried all the way across town... which, on some ultrasonic level it probably had since the town was located in a valley.

" _Finally_!" Belle huffed. "I've been waiting for _hours_ , Rumple! I tried to wake you, but all you did was mumble something about eggs in a basket and getting my creepy eye hands away from you. I didn't think I'd worn you out _that_ badly last night, _old man_!"

"I am not that old!"

"You're three hundred and something," Belle stated. "Which should creep me out, really, but it doesn't, because I love you!" she said and kissed him.

"I... love you too," said Rumple, hiding his guilt. "Which is why I am so sorry that I really should check up on the shop-"

"No shop!" Belle sussed. "You've other plans. _That's_ why I was trying to wake you, Rumple! _Neal_ is back from the dead!"

The Dark One stared at his new wife while his fingers twitched around the real dagger in his pocket. A thought that came from spending far too much time with young Henry in New York for some reason came to mind:

 _Oh farts_.

* * *

AN: Yeah, so the chronology doesn't exactly add up. Belle called Emma at the hospital in the morning on Rumple's phone (the Darth Vader ringtone), but it was almost evening the last chapter. Waaaa? As Adam & Eddy say, "Fuck it!" Did anyone else notice that the "blue bird" in the pilot is really a trained green parrot that they used greenscreen tech to turn blue? I mean, dude, no fucking bluebird has a beak like that and it just makes Snow White look dumb to call it that. And I don't care if that sounds Neil deGrasse Tyson levels of science anal-retentive! Anyway, this was another interlude of sorts. The people of Storybrooke are going to be taken down a peg or two before they have any hope of rising from the ashes of their predestined assholery and changing their fairy tale fates for something less... well... douchey. (Points to anyone who knows what show and character(s) "Oh farts" is from.)

Next up: Neal and Rumple have an awkward reunion (again).


	25. Another Awkward Reunion

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TEN**

 **ANOTHER AWKWARD REUNION**

Nothing said letting out post-resurrection frustration like hurling paint-filled balloons at one's shitty headstone that no one would even pay to put a fucking _date_ on.

Well, that and hurling a paint-filled balloon at one of Robin's forest hobo encampment residents who'd been about to take a piss on it. If anyone was going to piss on his grave, it was _him_!

Neal had left Emma to deal with prisoner transport, having had enough of Hook for a lifetime and in no mood to watch the creep flirt with her while tripping on meds - and Emma make quippy comments in return that Hook's delusional Pepe Le Pew mind- even when off meds - would interpret as playing hard-to-get. And no matter how deprogrammed Emma was of returning that sick infatuation, Neal didn't need to watch her emotional and psychological struggle over having been romantically and sexuality involved with her great grandpa.

Maybe that was douchey on his part, but Neal figured that he'd earned a few hours of douche time after being murdered and fucked over in every way possible after death by those he'd died to protect.

Besides, Belle had called Emma to say that she'd finally roused his father from a post-coital (gross) slumber and informed him of Neal's re-existence in the land of the living. There were some things he hadn't wanted to "look down on" from anywhere, and while his father and stepmother having sex was a distant second to his true love and stepfather having sex, it was still nasty.

He liked Belle, he really did, but the poor woman clearly had Stockholm Syndrome, and every time she tried to break free, his father went and did something selfless that sucked her right back in. Not that it was bad that his papa did selfless things, just that Rumplestiltskin's timing seemed to kick in some kind of Pavlovian reflex in Belle that kept her coming back for more emotional abuse.

Obviously, his stepmother was as hard to cure of her affliction as his father, which made them a well-suited couple in that dysfunctional way that apparently defined true love in a fucked up fictional world of morality tales on how not to live in order to aspire better living. So... yeah... that sucked for all of them, being God's poster children for screw-ups.

 _Splat!_

The last letter was now covered in bright yellow paint.

"Bae?"

Neal turned and forced himself not to straight up yell at his papa for being an idiot and all of the shit that could hit multiple fans because of some stupid, secret, self-sacrificing attempt at getting rid of the Dark One that had somehow gotten twisted into the man _he_ resurrected becoming an even badder-ass Dark One _intentionally_.

He almost succeeded when his father pulled him into a tight embrace, faltering on his bad leg. But then he felt the dagger in his father's pocket digging into his ribs and the time for a hug-it-out reunion had ended.

"What the hell are you thinking?" Neal exclaimed, failing miserably at his attempt as he pulled back.

"I-I'm sorry?" Rumple sputtered.

"You'd better be! You switched the dagger for a fake _and_ you really think you can test the containment strength of some ancient magical hat by filling it with knock-off _Lord of the Rings_ monsters, fairies, _and Emma_?"

Rumple faltered on his cane. "H-how did-"

"I was dead until this morning," Neal cut him off. "Gives perspective. I get it, though. Being the Dark One for three hundred years is dark magic nuking your heart. You finally got the girl and you don't want to tell her you're dying. That and somehow, I guess, Pan's Curse or Snow White's Curse changed _again_ how magic works here, so you dying doesn't mean no more Dark One anymore, it means the Darkness looks for a new host who's most susceptible to becoming its plaything. You figure it'll be Emma since her parents had the Apprentice cast that spell that took away her potential for darkness. If the hat can hold of your shit plus her, then you think it'll hold the Dark One. It _won't_. Emma's not _that_ powerful. And corrupting her heart, giving her some artificial dark side isn't going to balance her out and make her immune to that magical cancer either. She won't go around murdering people like the rest of you Dark Ones, but it will turn her into an emotionless asshole who treats her family - especially Henry - like shit.

"Now, _hand it over_ ," Neal demanded with a not-too-pleased look.

"I'm sorry, Bae, but what other choice do I have?" Rumple asked while awkwardly pulling out the wrapped blade. "It was the only option to try and rid the world of this... disease."

"It's not the only one. You find Excalibur, you fuse it with the dagger plus this dumb flame thing from the Titans or whatever," Neal muttered, "and that's supposed to extinguish the darkness for good. Which could be bullshit too. But, hey, Camelot should probably just be burned to the ground, so it'd be worth the trip for that. It is a silly place. Also, brainwashed and apparently run by that Farquuad guy from _Shrek_ who killed the real King Arthur and stole his identity - and his wife - with the intention to help the Savior come into her powers and free Merlin - and then kill everyone and take over Camelot... all based on some vague lifelong revenge plot.

"Also, Lancelot is somehow not dead and has been eating one too many chaemera meat pies to compensate for being stuck back in a racist kingdom run by a psychopathic wife-raper. But that's really beside the point," he concluded while draping an arm around his father's shoulders.

"Look, Papa, we're going to figure this out. I didn't die so you could kick it a few weeks later and unleash immortal darkness onto my family. But I also didn't die so you could not kick it and unleash immortal darkness onto my family. Also, the lying to Belle thing is not cool. You both need marriage counseling."

"Bae, I don't think-"

"MARRIAGE COUNSELING," Neal said loudly, "or I tell her about the dagger _which I am going to switch back_. You go to Archie like a good husband, and she doesn't have to know you traded the creepiest marriage proposal token ever for a magic hat box with which to commit temporary murder instead of just asking your damned family for help like a normal person!"

"But no one would help me if I did, Bae!" Rumple complained. "I _died_ for all of them and they didn't even bring me a bloody casserole after I got out of that cage! They didn't ask me if I was okay or send their condolences over losing you. They just ignored me like they _always_ do unless I can lend them magic! Being the Dark One is the _only_ contribution I have to this family of selfish ingrate idiots you tied me to by bedding that dumb blonde _princess_!"

"Hey, Emma is only a princess by blood, not how she was brought up," Neal countered. "You don't have to say it like that. And she had neurosyphilis from kissing Hook in Neverland and monkey herpes from 'bedding' Walsh. It made her a bit dumb, which isn't her fault. And, anyway, I did propose to my grandfather's cult member, so maybe I'm not that bright, Papa."

"Of course you are, Bae! Don't sell yourself short! Some of the smartest, most successful people had no formal education or gainful employment. You just have to find your calling here, with your family of selfish ingrate idiots."

"Yeah, and that includes you, Papa," said Neal, "on all counts. If you put more faith in this family instead of being a curmudgeon weirdo like you're still living in the Dark Castle, maybe it wouldn't take desperate times for them to come within cursing distance. And maybe _you'd_ find a calling that doesn't include being the Dark One."

Rumplestiltskin gave his son a sour look. "I always hate it when you did that! Twisting my parental advice back at me!"

" _Counseling_ ," Neal repeated. "I'm signing you up first thing tomorrow."

"Oh farts," Rumple grumbled.

* * *

AN: The King Arthur thing still bothers me. I decided he is the Eobard Thawne of Camelot played by an even creepier version of that douche from _Shrek_. Brownie points if you know where "Camelot. It is a silly place" came from. Extra fudge on top if you can guess what TV show/character inspired Neal's paintball vandalizing. (Hint: the paint was blue and four actors (that I know of) who had roles on this show at one time or another have also been on OUAT). As to Rumple's hat plan thing, I am just baffled by the logic behind the whole arc from there to the end of 5a. Gold's motives are completely bipolar, one episode/mini-arc about trying to save everyone from "The Darkness" and the next about getting it all for himself, and back and forth and back and forth. A &E say he is a "complex" character. Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaah... no, I don't think they understand what that word means. (Oh, and "Oh farts" belongs to Phil and Mike of _The Last Man on Earth_ , OUAT's much better written competition.)

Next up: Emma does something criminal while on night patrol.


	26. Firestarter

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **"be a hot asshole who shows zero remorse for their horrible actions, fall in love with a hot good guy who validates everything you do, and you'll live happily ever after but if you're an actual decent person who made mistakes b/c you're human, well...life sucks and then you die".**

 **— Ravenclaw312**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER ELEVEN**

 **FIRESTARTER**

 _With a taste of your lips_  
 _I'm on a ride_  
 _You're toxic I'm slipping under_  
 _With a taste of a poison paradise_  
 _I'm addicted to you_  
 _Don't you know that you're toxic_  
 _And I love what you do_  
 _Don't you know that you're toxic_

 _Don't you know that you're toxic_

Emma jabbed a preset button on the radio... _  
_

 _I'm the bitch you hated, filth infatuated.  
Yeah, I'm the pain you tasted, fell intoxicated_

She punched another, which brought up static, because Storybrooke had only two radio stations, the one broadcast out of the television studio's building near the power plant and the other from the basement of the sub-standard community college that made those sketchy for profit outfits with non-transferable credits seem like the peak of academic excellence.

Unfortunately, magic kept out the broadcasts from Bangor and the patrol car did not come with even a tape deck.

Hence Emma let out a frustrated sigh and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, wishing for something to stave off mind-numbing boredom as she found herself with nothing to do and no one to hang with, which was a rare evening. But Henry was grounded in jail with Hook, Neal was having dinner with his father and Belle, and she was on the outs with both her parents and Regina.

That meant "night patrol".

It had been a long time since she'd done night patrol from both points of view. Much longer from the whole future lived point of view, but even just starting over she'd been in New York for a year and before that hadn't had time to a night patrol since... like... February 2012 or thereabout, which was over a year ago.

She felt badly out of practice and not sure what to look for in a magical town quite honestly. _After_ the curse broke, during the brief stints of a month or so when there was no mortal peril going on, her father did all of the night patrols, he said either because the baby would keep him up anyway or so that she could go out with Hook... though, ironically, her lover had often had other plans already which she now knew was bro-ing around with her father and bullying various fairy tale villains in town so Hook had an outlet for his violent tendencies that kept him from throwing her head first into more walls and David satisfied his own hereditary bloodlust that he pretended was all in how George had raised James despite his always being sword-happy to slit some bad guy's throat as the first course of action.

Most night patrol evenings, Emma realized, she would spend home alone in her big, empty, kind of creepy Victorian that she'd decorated with magic out of a Martha Stewart magazine left by the previous owners who'd had their memories wiped of having ever owned and put up for sale the house she took as her own for free and for some reason never felt remotely bad about doing.

As if by subconscious design, rounding the corner brought Emma right to that very house with a "For Sale by Owner" sign on the white picket fence. She hated big houses that reminded of group homes and she hated picket fences that reminded of stereotypical families she was never part of - but Hook hadn't known that and _she_ hadn't known that Henry was trying to pick out a house she wouldn't like, so she'd pretended that she loved it for what it represented... even when every time she walked through the foyer she remembered Hook telling her that he wanted to hurt her, that she made him pathetic, that _she_ was pathetic, and then used the image of her son against her.

 _What doesn't break us makes us stronger_ she would tell herself, thinking it applied to their love.

It didn't.

And that house would always be a reminder of that toxic shitfest of a life that she'd deluded herself into thinking was love and happiness like a stupid teenage hippy in some guru's cult.

"Fuck it," Emma exhaled, throwing the car into park and getting out.

She had her department issue lock pick and the tumblers clicked over easily.

Emma shivered through the atrium and headed for the basement. In the basement there was an old door blocked by accumulated Curse provided holiday decorations which she pushed aside to head down into the cave system.

From _there_ it was only a five minute walk to where the Dwarfs were mining for fairy dust diamonds they never seemed to find after that first crop.

With a couple of sticks of dynamite and some fuses in hand, Emma returned the basement, set the explosives on the rock that could have contained Excalibur, lit the fuses with some strong _emotion_ and then high tailed it out of there.

Probably she should have poofed herself, price of magic or not, but that didn't occur until she was being thrown through the picket fence by the resulting explosion and tossed over the hood of the patrol car hard enough to crack the windshield.

* * *

"It's no big deal," Emma grouched, shoving a disgruntled Whale away and scowling at her anxious parents who had decided to stop being mad at her and pester the hell out of her because for some reason she had made them her emergency contacts.

"No big deal!?" Snow exclaimed. "Emma, you were nearly blown up! You were knocked out!"

"For like a second. I'll be fine!"

"Piss off!" Regina suddenly made her presence known, the declaration directed at everyone as she was holding her pounding head.

She waved a hand and healed Emma's multitude of minor injuries and complained, "You really need to learn how to do that yourself."

"You really need to mind your own business," Emma retorted, not even sure what that was supposed to mean, but apparently she was back to the early months of Regina getting on her nerves.

"A reported gas leak is my business," said Regina, arms crossed, "particularly when there was no actual call to the gas company and no residents reported the smell of gas. Care to explain?"

"Um... I smelled gas?"

"You were driving around in the middle of the night when it's forty degrees out with your windows open?"

"The cold keeps me awake."

"And the Dwarfs are missing two sticks of dynamite. Dopey went to check their dig site to see if it had been compromised by the explosion. I wiped his memory. You're welcome," Regina coolly told her. "Now, are you going to tell me why you blew up that house?"

Emma shrugged and picked at her bootlace bracelet that she realized maybe she should stop wearing if Graham was really such an asshole.

"As Mayor I have the authority to place you under a 48 hour psych hold, _Miss Swan_."

"Oh, Jesus, not the 'Miss Swan' thing," Emma groaned. "Fine, it brings back bad memories, okay?"

"Of what? You never set foot in that house. And, yes, I realize that is further confirmation that I had Sydney spying on you until you broke the Curse after which I used mirror magic to keep tabs on you and Henry during my period of being unable to see him - and the mess with my mother which also might have included bugging your apartment and car... Anyway, you can't possibly have bad memories of some boring, unimportant house owned by some 'naturist' who recently decided to trade their comfortable home for shitting in the woods."

After rolling her eyes, Emma retorted,. "Who says someone or some thing didn't wipe _your_ memories? Or _everyone's_?"

Regina was a smart woman and while The Charmings would have scratched their heads and asked what she was talking about, the former Evil Queen scowled and deduced, "You _didn't_ stop the time spell."

"I did! Well... sort of... years later... after the fact," Emma replied. "And I was kind of dead or soulless and in Purgatory so it wasn't even _legit_ me that lived in that other timeline, more like a carbon copy - like the whole universe. But then the other me died doing something she thought was heroic - and maybe it was, but still kind of stupid, I guess - and I got all of 'her' memories and was able to reset the timeline. And let's just say some really really _really_ messed up shit went down in that house, and it's bad enough I have the memories of participating in them without having to drive past fucking triggers, okay?"

Regina threw her hands up in the air. " _Wonderful_. So now we have to rearrange our lives to spare your fragile psyche after you screwed something up in a future that none of us remember. What exactly did you do that was so traumatizing?"

"Took everyone including Henry to the Underworld to save Hook because I wanted to split my heart to be with him. Plus... other bad stuff."

"You took _Henry_ to _Hell_ to save _Hook_ to share your heart with him so that, in the untimely event of his re-death _you would also die_?" Regina scoffed.

"I was kind of also the Dark One and had made Hook a Dark One too," Emma admitted with a grimace, "and he threatened to kill us all after murdering Merlin in cold blood and told me that he wanted me to suffer for making him the Dark One and basically was an abusive asshole, but I blamed myself, because I'm a really emotionally screwed up person who's used to equating being treated like dirt with being cared about," she concluded, which resulted in a withering look from the other woman.

"And you had the nerve to lecture me this morning on my parenting?" Regina seethed. "You screwed up the universe through atrocious parenting and I am forbidden from seeing Henry? Here I thought we had reached a certain understanding in Neverland, but clearly I was wrong. Perhaps I shouldn't have given you those memories of raising Henry after all. You obviously don't deserve the entitlement they gave you."

She scoffed, amending, "You really are just like your mother. If you'll excuse me, I am going to take Henry his favorite blanket and make fun of your venereal-diseased true love."

Regina spun on her heal and stalked off leaving Emma thinking glumly that it really was a sad commentary on the world in which she lived that being compared to Snow White was an insult to one's character.

* * *

Neal returned to Granny's to find Emma sitting on the steps of the Inn's dumpy front porch picking at a dried piece of weed grass.

"Thought you had night patrol, Sheriff Swan?" he asked, brow raised.

"I kinda broke the patrol car," she sighed, then raised a brow, asking, "You didn't hear the explosion?"

"You blew up the patrol car?"

"More like a house."

"Okaaaaaaaaaaay," said Neal, sitting beside her. "I think I need details. And no. Belle insisted on diner at Mickey Mouse's mansion which Pops soundproofed for reasons I don't want to consider, because it's either dark magic-related or sexual.

"On the bright side, though," he pulled out a familiar black-covered book from a satchel, "I nicked Isaac's 'unpublished' fanfiction, so even if he escapes, he'll have to start over. Got the key too, just so no one gets the bright idea to let him out," he concluded with a pointed look at Emma.

"Maybe I should blow up that mansion with all of the blank books, magic quills, magical wardrobes - and throw Henry's book in the fire."

"Pretty sure you're trying to cut down on the murdering here," Neal reminded. "Sure, he's a racist, bigoted, misogynist psychopath, but you could also have Henry use that magic quill to write him into murdering that Kurt Flynn guy and he could live out of the rest of his very ordinary life in supermax trying not to drop the soap. You know, before breaking it and tossing it in the fire."

"Did you just come up with that now?"

"Naw, been stewing on it for a few decades," said Neal. "So... house exploding?"

"The house Hook was planning to buy me that I stole using the Dark Curse he cast by killing Merlin..."

"You blew up your fuckpad?"

Emma huffed and amended, "And then Regina figured out it wasn't a gas leak and I had to admit that I'd altered time once and had to try and fix it and about the whole Hook-Underworld thing, and she yelled at me for yelling at her this morning about being a bad parent."

"And that surprised you?" Neal snorted.

"Not really. I deserved it."

Shoulders slumping, Emma grumbled, "She said she'd thought we 'had an understanding'. And I kinda thought... I mean... not yet but in that other timeline we became friends."

"You think you were friends?" Neal asked, surprised.

"You... don't?"

Neal rolled his eyes. "Em, you were just two women encouraging each other's horrible romances with horrible men. It wasn't any different than what Isaac wrote for you two: both intermittently used as a vehicle in the other's story to drive your awful romances. A relationship based on enabling unhealthy dependence on anyone, particularly when it involved neglecting your kid on both sides, isn't friendship, it's just... two junkies relying on the currently more sober one to help them score some smack."

Emma scowled and harumphed, "Wow, thanks for making me feel even _worse_ about this, Neal."

"Hey, you need someone telling it like it is. No fairy tale bullshit. Regina isn't your friend. She tried to murder you as a baby. She illegally adopted your baby and said she'd commit mass murder and cast the Dark Curse all over again to get Henry as her son to be her savior and make her a good person. That's fucking delusional. Someone with logic that narcissistic and nonsensical _can't_ be _anyone's_ friend. The woman needs serious therapy, an admission of accountability, and _regret_ before you should consider her anything but a co-parent who only gets to be a co-parent because she is - I hate to say it - better at the actual logistical parenting thing with her anal retentive micromanagement personality."

"You don't think I'm good at parenting?" asked Emma, brows furrowed.

"You kind of come off as more of a... cool aunt who only sees Henry a couple of times a year and is trying to discipline the kid without any clue how to do it. You know, when not relying on fake memories that turn you into an emotionless tyrant."

"What you're saying _again_ is, I need therapy," sighed Emma.

"I'm signing Pops and step-mom up tomorrow for marriage counseling. I bet I could get a family group rate."

"I dunno. Archie tends to blab people's secrets almost as bad as my mother," recalled Emma. "At least I can trust Regina not to mention the time travel dying thing to anyone. I mean, she didn't even remotely let on the barest hint that she had any idea she hired Hook on tasking him with murdering his own father."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was some crap universe retconning paradox stuff that didn't actually happen. Time wise it would have been impossible," Neal pointed out. "Regina hired him to kill her mother and he took the body of the guard from right where he was left bleeding through the portal. I'm sure Hook murdered his old man, but it didn't happen like that. And real deadbeat assholes don't get saved by True Love's Kiss in an un-fucked universe. Papa Jones probably got cursed by the actual Ursula sea goddess and then the two tried to date rape the same barmaid, Hook offed the guy, then his little bro probably happened to see the whole thing and ran off and Hook didn't give a shit and found the bread crumbs Regina left to lure him to her castle and forgot all about Liam 2.0."

" _Probably?_ That's awfully specific, Neal."

"Okay, maybe actually. Henry's book has a lot more details in the stories after ripping out the page The Author is trapped in," Neal admitted, pulling the ripped page out of his bag.

"What is that... mustard?" Emma asked of the yellow stain.

"Lobster bisque. I'm a bowl of soup. Don't ask," said Neal as he stood. "I'm gonna turn in. 'Night, Em."

Emma felt a little twing in her chest at the use of her old nickname. As Neal turned the knob on the front door, she blurted, "We could get coffee in the morning. Like... around nine? Talk about the book stuff and whatever?"

* * *

AN: That monstrosity of a fuckpad had to go! The Regina/Emma non-friendship spiel is taken from NotSoEvilRegal on Twitter letting Adam know "That's not friendship, that's just lazy writing. Stop acting like your show is about strong women instead of women w/unhealthy dependence on men." And if you don't know who is a bowl of soup, you're not a real Oncer! (Sorry for not showing Neal's family dinner. Maybe it will feature in a flashback/dream sequence at some point.) Oh, and the lyrics at the start are from "Toxic" by Britney Spears and "Firestarter" by The Prodigy.

Next up: Regina has a chat with Henry.


	27. Badass or Bad Moms?

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Review Error note: Since last chapter, guest reviews are going straight to being posted without ever showing up in "moderate reviews". WTF is going on with this website? First they're vanishing for days and now they're just showing up unannounced? Get your shit together, ffnet!  
**

 **Note to Mir: I am not a fan of Brittany Spears either. I had never heard "Toxic" until it came on the radio driving home last week. As for Emma, she feels burdened by her secret and disconnected from Neal. As he pointed out, she has a weird and unhealthy fixation on trying to be friends with Regina - which clearly, ad hoc by the writing on the show, is because Regina is her Lily proxy and a way to make up for not trusting her and _then_ discovering that her destiny is the reason Lily's life was ruined. I think Emma has been using Regina in Lily's place, thus trying to find a happy ending for her (as though she was Lily) when Regina herself was never her friend nor does she deserve a happy ending. But since Lily has been colder to her than Regina... long theory short, Emma has issues. But I don't think it's "cruel" to anyone but _herself_ that Emma told Regina the truth. She's in a self-loathing place and felt guilty about all the accusations she threw around, knowing she did horribly selfish and dark things. If anything, it resets the Emma/Regina dynamic to the more authentic place it was before Neverland, just with self-loathing and paranoia on both parts, which does facilitate fixing "present problems and behaviors". As for Emma "blaming her behavior on an alternative timeline," yes, she is doing that a lot in the way Regina kept blaming her behavior on The Author. In a way, Emma is going through the Five Stages of Grief and Loss (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), but pin-balling between all of them depending who she is interacting with and the circumstances. Denial and Anger seem to dominate her interactions with Regina and her parents while she's full-on bargaining and depressed with Neal. And every now and then there's a moment of acceptance and full responsibility for what she's done. Eventually, Emma will settle on acceptance, but it will be a long road.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWELVE**

 **BADASS OR BAD MOMS?**

The smell in the Sheriff's Station caused Regina to recoil and swallow back the reflexive urge to vomit. Obviously, Gold had cast some sort of magical Febreeze after dispatching Zelena - a spell which had worn off since the discovery of her mysterious absence.

Regina was no fool. After Hook bitched like a little girl about Gold falsifying video evidence to frame him in a murder he actually was complicit in - but he didn't see it that way since he wasn't the one planning it and had nothing to gain - and knowing Gold would not be satisfying with leaving his tormentor and son's murderer in a cushy jail cell to have her fate determined by bleeding heart liberal pussy cats, there was a ninety percent chance that her former instructor had offed Zelena.

For which Regina would send him a fruit basket after his honeymoon, and he would know that she knew without either of them actually saying it, and that would be that.

"Mom!" Henry called out, scrambling off of his cot. "Can I go home?"

"Just because Emma had no right to criticize my parenting," Regina told him stiffly, "does not mean you get off without punishment, Henry. You are becoming increasingly and worryingly rebellious. You are _still_ a child and you cannot go joyriding in stolen cars - or cars of any kind - or skulking around town at all hours, not when this is no longer a peaceful town where nothing dangerous ever happens. This is not the Storybrooke you grew up in. It's full of dangerous people."

"What am I supposed to do?" Henry complained. "I don't have any friends, in large part because of _you_ and how Storybrooke was, me growing up while no one else did. I mean, did it never occur to you how lonely I would be? How selfish and unfair that was? I was a freak that no one paid attention to, because the Curse made them, and then I was the son of the Evil Queen who terrified everyone. I barely got to be the son of the Savior before that got shot to Hell, and now everyone hates me because I got to live in the real world while they were shitting in the woods."

"I hardly think a castle is 'shitting in the woods'-"

"Lad has a point," interjected Hook. "I saw your castle."

"Keep your mouth shut, Guyliner," Regina snarled, "or I'll find the keys to that cell and shove them up your-"

"Oye, enough threatening my arse!" the pirate grunted. "And having been neglected and abandoned with my only friend being my lovable bully of an older brother, I can understand the lad's grievances."

"Piss off, Hook!" Henry snapped. "I don't want your sympathy!"

"Ungrateful little-"

"KEYS!" Regina growled and Hook retreated back into the shadows of his cell, flopping back onto hit cot, grumbling about 'women on the bloody rag'.

"Look, Henry," she said, moving to stand in front of his cell, "I know I made a lot of mistakes in raising you, and yes, I may have been selfish at times, but consider that the alternative would have been being 'adopted' by Peter Pan's agents and growing up with 'friends' like Felix, I hardly think you can consider your upbringing a hardship."

Henry rolled his eyes and argued, "Being the lesser of two evils doesn't make you a 'good', Mom. I may see you as my mom and not a villain, because I'm your son, but that doesn't make you _not a villain_ to the rest of the world. Maybe I should've clarified that.

"And maybe," he amended, "you should think if it's really _your best chance_ to be with a guy who says nothing bad you did matters anymore and none of that it is who you, like the Evil Queen phase of your life just suddenly disappeared because he loves you. Which is stupid. That's part of who you are. And I thought you were working on that with Archie before your mom came along, and now you're back to self-pity and blaming everyone and saying you deserve a happy ending without any work to earn it just because you met some guy a delinquent fairy said is your soulmate.

"Nothing against Tinkerbell, but she sounds kinda like she was snorting pixie dust instead of just tossing it around to play matchmaker."

"Lad makes another point," Hook interjected again. "Bloody fairy was probably higher than a beanstalk when you met her. She's half the reason Neverland's pixie dust supply was depleted. Never trust a junkie for dating advice."

Regina scoffed, "Says the serial day-drinking pirate who's currently stoned."

"ON PAIN KILLERS FOR MY VIOLATED BUM!"

"And I'm sure thousands of bar maids you gave every STD under the sun are high-fiving each other in the Afterlife," said Regina.

"I was sparing them the indignity of bastard children!"

"You were getting them drunk and date raping them in the ass, you loathsome cretin," Regina snapped. "You're no better than the bastard who raped my mother, who no doubt contributed his psychotic gene pool toward the creation of my late psychopathic sister."

"Please, your mother was just as much of a psychopath, luv," Hook argued from his cot. "One would have to be to murder their daughter's love, a good man, and force her into a loveless marriage with a creepy old king to groom her into becoming a second generation murderer to carry out revenge upon a family that wronged her as a young lass by taking over instruction under her tutor who would require her to murder her own father and all with the _ultimate_ goal of becoming a _heartless_ Dark One."

"Yes, you'd know all about hearts and Dark Ones," Regina mumbled.

"And I have abandoned my quest of revenge in the interest of perusing a good woman who sees the good in me!" Hook boasted.

Regina rolled her eyes. "I think those sedatives and pain killers caused memory loss, Hook, because Emma is neither a good woman nor does she have any interest in you pursuing her."

"She's just playing hard to get. It's her thing. She's hot one day, frigid the next, but I'll met that icy wall around her heart with my persistent charms," Hook argued. "I made a vow. And I told Neal that I was in it for the long haul, so he'd best get his silly attempts to rekindle that short-lived childish crush out of the way, so a _real man_ can show Emma how to love."

"And people accuse me of being a delusional narcissist," groaned Regina.

"Can you just kill him?" sighed Henry. "We can say Zelena must have left some residual dark suicide magic in that cell..."

"Tempting, but that would violate my attempts to be a better person," said Regina with a grimace, "and make _you_ an accomplice to murder. I don't want you adopting my morals, Henry. Doing a bad thing for good reasons is still a bad thing. It still darkens your heart. And your heart must be protected most of all."

"Oh, spare me!" whined Hook.

"I may not kill you, but I my gray morals still allow sodomizing you with rusty jail cell keys, pirate!"

"Bitch!"

"Manwhore!"

"Can I at least have my blanket?" sighed Henry.

* * *

AN: So, Henry has a bit more sense than his AU self, though Regina seems stuck in the land of I-Don't-Recall No Accountability. Hook actually made some good points, but he's still loathsome.

Next up: Emma has an actual legit more than thirty second conversation with her father about family stuff and not some magical fiasco interrupted by a screaming Dwarf.


	28. Bad Dads

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

 **BAD DADS**

Sleep was just not in the cards for Emma tonight. Neal had left her on the Inn's steps to hide his stolen magical items, and though she'd intended to follow up to her own room soon after, Emma really had little desire to deal with the mess that Hook had made.

Of course, she could have just used magic to fix it, but her few uses of magic thus far had left her feeling as jittery and unsure of it as back in the original beginning... before she'd quickly succumbed to the high of the feeling came with just translocating a cup of hot chocolate.

Regina had, for at least a short time, sworn off all magic to curb the temptation of _dark magic_ , and a she found herself wandering Main Street, Emma wondered if she shouldn't take similar precautions. After all, Gold had his heart _purified_ and yet still the _psychological_ draw of that power had crippled him with remarkable speed.

Emma didn't want to backslide, and she already knew that she had addictive tendencies, thanks to alcoholics on both sides of her family tree.

But at the same time, it was supposed to be her magic that saved everyone... somehow... at some point... maybe?

Actually, Emma realized, she wasn't even clear on that. Other than breaking the Curse, was her magic part of anything greater than being the contrived consequence of the Apprentice's spell? Perhaps, while it was a power that had set her apart in a way that had singled her out to be selected for the task of saving an entire world, magic itself wasn't her real weapon in this fight?

It hadn't really been in breaking the Curse. Oh, maybe without having it her kiss wouldn't have done more than wake Henry - if that - and maybe her magic had helped weaken the mental fog around everyone she'd helped, sure. But helping them had been the main thing, that's what Henry had told her so long ago, before Jefferson and August had gotten into her head with the magic part.

Emma kicked at a can and shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets.

Magic really had fucked up everything.

She'd been a good person - or _wanted to be_ \- until she started using magic. It had _changed_ her even before falling down that time portal screwed _everything_ up. Neal had been right to be judgey in the pawn shop, and she had been right to feel secretly ambivalent despite acting offended. Because magic was 99% emotion, and love and hate were _so_ similar, so often entwined that pretty soon you couldn't tell the difference between the emotions fueling your magic... and Emma could only presume that was the effect _magic_ , like a drug, changing brain chemistry or something similar.

Because she'd definitely confused her emotions and had darkened her magic and those two had feed off each other in a vicious cycle. And it was certainly true of other magic users she knew. Regina clearly couldn't tell when magic she thought was fueled by love was still a selfish love - though it didn't help that the stuff visually manifested as "light magic" even when it was gray at best and could still break curses. Apparently, God hadn't been terribly specific in the underlying factors of "love" for curse breaking, so it didn't matter if you were a raging psychopath whose love was more of a selfish coveting; you could have a very fucked up worldview as long as that other person was the center of your world.

That's how Gold had saved them, sacrificed himself for his son and Belle. But it hadn't saved _him_. All of these vague parameters regarding true love apparently didn't reach the level of the soul. Whatever had happened in the Underworld wasn't down to a fundamental level, because it was still a place ruled by magic, in which the living could die and those wielding magic could use it to alter things. Souls were not really stripped bare for judgment there, just cast into whatever mockup of the real world Hades had on his mind and forced to interact with people - some incarnation of them - from their past who had scores to settle. Considering a Young Cora possessing Mary Margaret, Emma was loathe now to say that any of those people she'd met in the Underworld were _really_ those people, but perhaps some _versions_ of them, homunculi just like her own successor that magic had split off and sent to the Underworld for Hades to play with, to torment others when they died.

Which meant there was a soulless version of Cora and Pan probably skulking around a burnt-out version of Storybrooke right now, thirsting for living people to take a vacation to the Underworld with their shiny, tempting souls.

Emma really wanted to avoid that.

Really, there was a _lot_ she wanted to avoid, particularly anything to do with Isaac. Burning the page was seriously tempting, no matter how valid Neal's argument. Would it really be a stain on her soul so much to kill a man who'd destroyed multiple worlds and thousands of lives for his own personal quest at fame? He was decades out of time. No one would miss him. Whereas bringing him back into the timeline of the "real world" where he'd come from, even without his magical quill, could be dangerous.

It was the mind, not the magic, that was the true weapon, and that man was a megalomaniacal asshole!

Emma kicked the can again and watched it bounce into the gutter next to her father's pickup.

To her surprise, David sat up in the passenger seat and looked blearily at her.

"Emma?"

"Dadvid?" Emma retorted, regretting the 'Dad' and trying unsuccessfully to shape it into 'David'.

He rolled down the window and asked, "Did you just call me 'Dadvid'?"

"It's been a long day."

"I have coffee," her father offered a thermos, looking hopeful.

It was a surprising change from looking betrayed this morning, so Emma reluctantly nodded and got in as David slid into the driver's seat.

"Why are you sleeping in your car?"

"Fight with your mother," sighed David. "I was hoping with the distraction of the whole explosion thing she'd at least let me take your room, but... apparently, she's Neverland levels of pissed at me."

"Well, she did forgive you less than a day later," Emma reminded after taking a sip from the metal cup-lid. "It'll blow over. I mean, you two share a heart after all."

"Of which she kept the part with the dark spot."

"Hmmm, true," Emma conceded. "Do I even want to know what the fight was about?"

"It wasn't even anything important," shrugged David. "I think she's mostly upset with some things Ruby said. I made a stupid comment after she left, and your mother's taking it out on me. Although, I probably shouldn't have called our son a 'thing' and told her to shut him up."

"Ouch, David."

"It was a long day! I got suspended by my own daughter, called a selfish prick by someone I considered one of my oldest friends, drank too much to deal with that, and had to put up with a screaming newborn that I have no idea how to take care of, because A) I never got the chance to figure that out with my first child, B) the two weeks I had back in this world that has actual information on how to do that was spent fighting flying monkeys and conning my own amnesiac grandson. And C) since my aforementioned first child objected to the name my wife and I chose for our second child, my son doesn't actually have a name."

"Still, though, ' _thing_ '?" Emma groaned. "I at least called Henry 'kid' when I had no idea if he was a girl or a boy and was kicking the shit outta my spine and bladder, which is a lot more uncomfortable than putting up with some crying."

David groaned. "Okay, I get it, men are weak and ungrateful and would pass out from one menstrual cramp. I already got that speech from your mother. Can we not talk about my very bad day as a parent?"

"Well, you're not alone," sighed Emma. "Regina kinda ripped me a new one over my poor parenting."

"For what?" asked David, confused. "You've been a good mother, Emma. If Regina is still stuck on the whole thing about taking Henry back to New York, you just wanted to protect him from danger, and there is a lot of that here. I mean, a house randomly blew up tonight, and that's a _quiet_ night here!"

"It was about a lot more than that," Emma countered. "And you're wrong about New York. I was being selfish. _I_ didn't want to deal with it, with being the Savior. It had nothing to do with Henry. Or, at least, that wasn't my main reason. Just like giving him up for adoption was really about me first and my not wanting to deal with all of the possible failures and disappointments. So, I know, I was being hypocritical yelling at you and Mom about that spell, and wanting to just focus on having another kid and putting all of this crazy shit that's full of pain and disappointments behind you. I _know_ all that, but it's hard not to still be angry at you guys, to forgive you... I guess... because I'm still trying to not be angry with myself and forgive myself for the choice I made back then... if that makes any sense?"

"Well, it makes more sense than most things around here," answered David. "And for what it's worth, Emma, your mother and I _are_ sorry for the choices we made. I _knew_ it was a bad idea, that spell, but I loved your mother so much, wanted to see her happy, that it was easier to go along with it than try and... I don't know... try to work through all of her unresolved childhood issues that made her that terrified of being a bad mother who couldn't raise a good child."

"I guess having a mother that her father put on a pedestal like some saintly martyr while making constant comparisons between them really screwed her up, huh?" mused Emma.

"Which she knows now was a lie," David grimaced. "She knows her mother was not a good person for a large portion of her life, that she ruined lives in some pretty terrible ways that had consequences her descendants are still paying for. I think it must be hard to go the majority of your life worshiping someone, basing everything you do, the choices you make, particularly about your family, on trying to live up to that standard only to find out, just as you're about to become a mother, that all of the horrible tragedies in your life, the battles you are still fighting, were the result of that someone."

After a pause, he mused, "I suppose it's a good thing that Snow and I decided our first child wouldn't be named after a family member, or you'd have been named 'Eva' and then things would probably have been more strained and distant now with your mother than they already are."

Emma let out a sigh before responding, "I guess I never thought about how hard things are for her, just hearing about the stuff with Cora and Eva in a sort of... peripheral way. And Henry doesn't seem to bothered by discovering he's named after his grandfather that his mother murdered. Which, really... I think I'd better get him back into therapy, because that _should_ bother him, right?"

"We could probably all use some therapy."

"Yeah, that's what Neal said. That maybe Archie would give us a family discount or group rate or something."

David snorted at that and turned the thermos in hands. "I really am sorry about not helping Neal. We were being selfish. And it was more my fault than your mothers. I was the one who really insisted he let go. I don't even exactly know why, to be honest. I don't dislike him. And I don't hold his paternity against him. God knows I have nothing to be proud of in that regard, even if my father was just an abusive drunk. I suppose... he abandoned you, and even if it was for good reasons... I did the same, and if I couldn't find the strength to look for you, I didn't want him to either."

Emma sighed again and shrugged. "Doesn't really matter. What happened - happened. We can't change it. And that... we're not together and I don't think we ever will be."

"Still afraid of taking a chance on a good moment?" asked David. "A man comes back from the dead, Emma, I think that's reason enough to give love a chance."

She shook her head. "He's the one who doesn't want to, and he had a valid argument. There's stuff... stuff I can't tell you about me and us, stuff that being dead clued Neal into. But if I did, you'd agree with him that I'm not the Emma he fell in love with anymore. And I'm not sure I can ever be that person again, someone Neal would respect again."

"Emma... you don't know that."

"But I know the odds aren't in our favor," Emma countered. "It's like... Regina and Robin trying to being this soulmate fated perfect happy couple decades too late, after they made choices that add up to being two people who can't possibly be so destined anymore... or at least not in a good way, a way that makes them both better.

"I mean," she continued, "when they were young, Regina was just a depressed, desperate young woman looking to escape a shitty childhood and a loveless marriage. And Robin was an amateur thief trying to save up enough to buy a tavern. But now? Robin turned his thieving into a career, brought an innocent women into that life, made choices that led to her to being targeted by Regina, that got her killed _by Regina_. Regina is murderer, a rapist, a woman who'll do anything to escape responsibility for her crimes - which, now, is apparently falling for a man who doesn't want her to in spite of the crime of murdering his wife, the mother of his child."

Emma shook her head again and concluded, "Two morally bankrupt people, soulmates or not, are only going to make a codependent, self-destructive mess of a relationship that hurts even more people."

"You think that you and Neal are morally bankrupt?" asked David.

"I think one of us is," she grimaced, "and, if Regina has proven anything, trying to get that morality back isn't so easy."

David gave Emma a curious look and deduced, "Something happened at the barn, didn't it?"

Grimacing, Emma replied, "Let's just say that I got a look at the kind of person I could become, that I've already started becoming, and if _that's_ what my mother saw in that vision... if you'd seen it... well... you'd have made the same choice."

"But whatever you saw, Emma," David argued, "you're not that person. And whatever choice's you've made that could lead you down that path... you know the end result now, so you won't become her."

"I wish I could believe that. Gold likes to say that just because you know what's going to happen, doesn't mean you know what's going to happen. And trying to change something... He tried to change his fate, his son's fate, and ended up making it happen by trying to avoid it."

"Maybe so, but he didn't have a family on his side."

"Do I really, though?" Emma asked, "Have you guys on my side? Because it feels like all I get is either criticism for not being optimistic enough or in the right way that honors my royal fairy tale heritage, or encouragement to keep doing foolish fairy tale exemplifying stuff, because it's me being optimistic, even if it's also me being an idiot. Neither of those are helpful."

David gave her a pained, apologetic look. "I had no idea you felt that way."

"I thought I made it pretty clear in Neverland."

He grimaced. "I'm sorry. I got distracted-"

"By hiding that you were dying," Emma interrupted. "While somehow my mother ended up pulling a Regina and making all of my abandonment issues that she was responsible for all about her not getting to be a mom."

"Yeah... that... sometimes your mother says things that can be hurtful," David sighed. "I know she really doesn't mean it. She wasn't trying to replace you, Emma."

"But she was trying to make sure I turned out perfect when she had that spell cast on me before I was born," Emma reminded. "It's hard to get over that, even when I know I've been a crappy mom and made selfish choices. It just... that's what I do. But Snow White... everything pointed to her being just like her 'character', but she has these moments when-"

"She's unpredictably selfish like a normal person?"

"I guess," agreed Emma. "Maybe it would be easier if she acted like she knew she was a normal person instead of like her shit doesn't stink - pardon my French."

"She was raised a princess, Emma, you have to remember that," David reminded.

"Yeah, even if her pedigree is anything but royal other than pain in the ass," Emma muttered under her breath.

David frowned and asked, "What was that?"

"Nothing," sighed Emma.

"Hey," David inquired, "What about Graham?"

"What about him?"

"No," David said, gesturing to the bootlace on her wrist, "I meant as a name for your brother. He helped your mother and I, but I know were close in a quasi-romantic way, so..."

"He was infatuated with me because he was an assassin who was obsessed with my mother, because he wanted to know why she was the one person he couldn't murder in cold blood."

David grimaced. "So... scratch another one off the list then."

"Yeah, sorry." Emma shrugged and handed back the thermos cup. "I've had enough emotional trauma for one day. I think I'm finally going to call it a night."

"Probably a good idea," David agreed and watched his daughter slink off into the night.

On the second floor of the apartment building he could see his wife watching through a crack in the curtains, and David rubbed his temples wondering if he should risk going back upstairs. He loved his wife, really he did, but sometimes... there was 'unpredictable normal' and there was just 'completely out of character'. It was something he'd been trying to deny for awhile, but ever since Neverland and then in the Enchanted Forest, how she treated Neal (and Belle) and became so obsessed with having another child yet not even worrying about it's wellbeing when she decided to try and bring him back from the dead, a previously unaccomplished act that might have killed her _and_ their baby...

David loved his wife, but there was something wrong with her.

* * *

AN: David strikes me as a character with a superiority complex and an inferiority complex about his superiority complex. He has some of the same dark qualities as his brother in him. He said on the show that the possibility of that scares him, which suggests based on the stab-happy/unsympathetic writing of his character (he wanted to leave Regina to be killed by the wraith, imprison Regina in solitary confinement in the Enchanted Forest, slit the mermaid's throat, gleefully beat up Bo Peep with Hook after an absurdly disproportionate amount of violence and bloodshed on his David's part in flashback) suggests that David is in deep denial that he already exhibits the same disturbing violent streak as James. David increasingly comes off like all of those asshole police officers who think they are super good people upholding the law while they go around shooting people who just happen to tick them off on a bad day. But at least he's not racist!

Next up: Emma and Regina, the morning after.


	29. Bad Blood

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

 **BAD BLOOD**

"What are you doing here?"

Emma held up her peace offering as she stepped into Regina's office. "I brought you an apology fruit basket."

The brunet scowled. "Using apples you stole from my own tree?"

"It was this or a kale salad. I can go to Granny's..."

"Just tell me what you want," Regina grumbled while stuffing another personal effect into a file box on her soon-to-be-Mary-Margaret's desk.

"To apologize. Hence the 'apology fruit basket'," Emma replied, setting the basket down. "So... I'm sorry. I'm sorry I blew up that house. I'm sorry I messed up the future past-"

"And sorry you got caught and had to admit to any of it?" Regina cut her off with a surely look that drew a wince from Emma.

"Well... yeah... that too," she conceded and crossed her arms, "but you can't fault me for that, really, when it's been your default setting since before I was born."

"Actually," Regina countered, "I can. One of us has been trying to become a better person for Henry. One of us clearly has been becoming a _worse_ person in spite of him. And the last thing Henry needs is your kind of influence."

"Hey!" Emma snapped, "that's not fair. You killed your own father, you tried to murder me as a baby, you killed hundreds of people, and you _poisoned Henry_. But I'm the worse influence?"

"I was already a bad person when I did all of those things," reminded Regina. "You and everyone else here touted what a hero you were, what a good person dedicated to justice, but clearly that's been a lie. You admit to hurting Henry, to endangering your family, all to keep the affection of a man you met under a pile of corpses of hundreds of people whose murders he was knowingly complicit in, who spent weeks lulling them into a sense of security and becoming their friend only to use their bodies as a means to infiltrate your little bad of merry wenches so he could get a portal here by leaving you all to starve to death, who then left this entire town to be blown up if we hadn't stopped that self-destruct crystal, who then spent our mission to save Henry being generally useless other than trying to get you drunk on his homemade rum and get into your pants. And _then_ , according to Henry, he sexually assaulted you in New York, but you still came with him and recruited him to baby-sit Henry instead of anyone else in this town, so that he can, what, teach Henry how to get a date through stalking, alcohol and lying?

"So, yes, _Miss Swan_ , I have a problem with your influence on _my son_."

"I'm not doing that anymore! I locked Hook up! While you're dating the man whose wife you had executed!" Emma exclaimed, hands fisted at her sides.

"Actually, Robin and I are taking a break," Regina countered. "I have a problem with his lack of a problem with that. You can't help whom you love, but that doesn't mean you have to act on it when it's morally repugnant. Tinkerbell was right when she said I ruined my happy ending. Expecting to be able to reclaim it decades later is foolish, soulmates or not."

"I know," sighed Emma and she slumped without invitation onto the couch. "Mine's ruined too. Neal was afraid and left. I was afraid and I let him die. And now... now he doesn't want to give us a second or third or whatever chance. He said I became someone too different from who I was back then, someone who's done bad things he can't just forget and doesn't have the same... interest in justice and honor that he does. He thinks I'm selfish and messed up, that I don't even understand how love works, so maybe I don't even really love him, just the idea of that happy ending, and that's why I ended up with Hook."

"Maybe Neal isn't as dumb as I thought," Regina mused. "And what do you want, _sympathy_? I get what you're trying to do. But we're not friends. We're barely even co-parents. We occasionally do magic together, but other than that, all I am to you is an obstacle, a reminder of what you gave up, what you'll never be able to get back, what you'll never know how it could have been, because all you have is _my_ memories of Henry, and deep in your heart it twists like a knife that in every one of those memories when he calls you 'Mommy' he was really talking to me."

She smirked and continued, "I will _always_ be his mommy, while all you'll ever be is a fairy tale princess he got to live with in New York for awhile. Those fake memories will never stand up to the real ones. You'll always have second billing."

The coldness in Regina's voice and expression reminded Emma uncomfortably of those first few months in Storybrooke when Mayor Mills was trying to get rid of her. It had hurt then, because part of her had known it was right, and it hurt now, because nothing had really changed and probably never would. She'd given up her position when she gave up her son, and nothing could change the consequences of that, the bond that Henry had with Regina - whether she deserved it or not - and the bond that she would _never_ have with her son. Or, for that matter, her mother.

"I know," Emma finally managed. "I'll always be the one who gave him up, and no matter how often Henry says it was to give him his best chance, that won't change that I abandoned him. I get that better than anyone. And I hate it. I _hate_ that I want so badly to have that with him while being so angry with my parents for trying to connect with me, like they're not to blame at all for how my life sucked.

"Best chance or not, Henry wasn't happy here," she sighed, "and I'm as much at fault for that as you - but you were the villain and I was the hero of that story, Regina, so I'm always gonna get the blame."

"And right now," Regina answered, picking up an apple, "you have no idea how much satisfaction that gives me."

She rubbed it on her jacket while asking, "If that's all, I'm rather busy."

Emma grimaced in defeat, stood and walked out.

Regina watched her go, taking a bite of the Honey Crisp after she'd gone and looking out her window onto the Town Common. It was days like this she wished she'd taken a shovel from her garage when she discovered that woman cutting up her tree with a chainsaw - and then whacked her over the back of the head, cut her up in the bathtub, and used her Savior parts as mulch.

No, they were not friends. They were never going to be friends.

Though, Regina considered as she watched Ruby Lucas walk alone across the grass, 'friendship' with a member of that bloodline was hardly something to strive toward.

* * *

Well, this day truly sucked, Emma decided as she sat in a booth at Granny's. First, she'd had to let out Henry and Hook, the former who refused to join her for breakfast and the later who blaming her for "getting arse raped" and threatening to sue the department for complicitness in medical malpractice, all words she was shocked the pirate even knew.

 _Then_ she got snarked at by Regina when trying to apologize. And she'd thought it was a really good apology, too, like clever and stuff.

And _now_ Neal had stood her up for coffee, which she _should_ have seen coming just like Regina's response to taking apples off of her own tree. It seemed to Emma that she really stunk at trying to make amends with people she'd hurt. The worst part, she mused, was that some didn't even deserve her making amends with them, but she really did have this annoying need to please people, and in particular a need to be liked by people who were unlikable... which was really messed up.

"You look worse than Grumpy this morning," Tinkerbell remarked while refreshing Emma's coffee.

"Neal stood me up," Emma grumbled.

"Well, you did stand _him_ up and then proceeded to make cow eyes at Captain Syphilis as Pan's Curse was barreling toward us. Plus the whole him dying to get back to you and you acting like he never came back into your life at all the very next day."

" _Thanks_ for that," Emma glowered. "I'm _aware_. And thank _you_ for encouraging Hook to stalk me, _Tink_."

"Hey, I just think Bae deserves better than you," the ex-fairy stated bluntly.

"Yeah, and you think Regina and Robin deserve each other too," scoffed Emma.

"Well, she's a murderous witch queen, and he's an honorless creep who wants to shag a murdeorus witch queen," shrugged Tinkerbell. "If they deserved each other as novices to make each other better people, now they deserve each other as a couple of skanks who'll reinforce each other's douchery. That's how soulmates work. You meet at the right time, when you're in sync _in a good way_ and you complete each other, make each other better, your relationship is a love for the ages. You wait too long and then try to force what's long past its expiration date, and there's a good chance you'll end up in a co-dependent, self-destructive relation _shit_."

"So, basically," Emma surmised, "you've been encouraging all of us into unhealthy relationships just to fuck with us?"

"Damn straight!" Tinkerbell nodded. "I got screwed over by the fairies, I got betrayed by the humans. Why should I help _any_ of you?"

"But I thought you just told Regina _not_ to pursue Robin."

"Duh. I'm fucking with her. Bitch ruined my life. I tried to do her a solid. _I saved her life from a suicide attempt_ and the bitch sold me out _for no reason_ ," huffed Tinkerbell. "She could have said she wasn't ready for love. Instead, she set me up to steal that pixie dust and when she chickened out, did she give me a heads up? No. She left me there hanging, thinking I'd helped someone, that I'd shown the Blue Bitch that just because you foresaw someone could go full evil didn't mean it was wrong to try and steer them away from that path. I got de-winged and exiled to Neverland _for eternity_. If you hadn't taken me with you, I'd still be there rotting for not being that sparkly hoe's blind little minion."

"Then why did you try go back to being a fairy?"

Tinkerbell shrugged. "Why did you keep flirting with Captain Barely Functional Alcoholic every time he went behind your back to do something vengeful, stupid, or, Hell out right insulted you to your face?" she challenged. "Self-loathing-filled glutton for punishment. I screwed up. I thought I was better, smarter, more compassionate than I really was. I was just naive and foolish and arrogant. Did I deserve to spend eternity in an acursed jungle? No. But I shouldn't have done what I did. It was full stop stupid. And now... I just want to prove that I've learned from my mistakes. I want that snotty bimbo to see that I know where I screwed up and that I can do a better job - even if I think she's an irredeemable cunt who's probably got some nefarious plan to kill off humanity and take over the world. I mean, she's the closest thing a fairy has to a mother, so I'm basically programmed to crave her approval even when I hate her guts."

Grimacing, Emma considered, "Maybe I lucked out not being raised by my mother then."

"Or maybe it fucked you up more. Who can say?" Tinkerbell responded. "Well, Dr. Hopper could probably say. You should make an appointment. He's pretty booked, though. I'm seeing him for my anger management. Every time I feel like I might punch someone in the tits, I take a breath and repeat 'serenity now'. You should try it. Oh, and the avocados. I'm obligated to tell you to try the avocados, even though it's April and they're from Chile and came on the mysterious night supply shadow train."

"Shadow train?"

"You never once thought about how supplies get to a cursed town no one can find or leave? Obviously, it's a shadow train."

Emma just nodded, because of course it was. She'd heard stories like that when she was locked up in Arizona. Hell, maybe it was even the same one that one of her cellblock mates insisted she'd seen... though she was a meth addict, so that was fifty-fifty.

"Gimme a grilled cheese with some avocado to go," Emma sighed.

* * *

AN: OUAT and friendship is even more toxic than OUAT and romance. The train thing is a real myth from Willcox, Arizona. I figured even if the writers don't give a shit about their magical curse rules, there has to be an explanation for how in the flying fuck a freight train was able to cross inside the border of Storyrbrooke. It couldn't have been that steam engine from Arizona myth, but who can say what parallel literary universe it might have come from? I like to think if Bo Beep is a warlord, then it's from _The Little Engine That Could_ -verse and instead of an enchanting tale of a little train filled with toys, books, fruit, milk and treats for "all those good little boys and girls on the other side of the mountain" the poor train was punished for something and has been sentenced to bringing avocados and Tampax to all those assholes on the other side of the Dark Curse line.

Next up: What are Rumbelle up to? What new story facts have appeared in Henry's book? Will Hook's sphincter ever recover?


	30. Rumbelle in the Jungle

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: 1) They'll probably work out a grudging "enemy of my enemy is my friend"/"you can't choose family" type acquaintanceship, a sort of combination of Regina's relationships with Rumple and Snow; Emma can be manipulative like Rumple, which Regina respects, but she is also gullible in an arrogant way like Snow, which Regina loathes. I suppose their relationship will depend on which qualities Emma brings to the particular magical shitfest party they are attending. 2) Tink seems to be channeling Anya from _Buffy_. OUAT really needs an Anya. 3) The Shadow Train may or may not return. If it doesn't, my headcanon tells me that it should have stopped servicing Storybrooke after the Dark Curse broke, but the Blue Fairy is using it to smuggle to another magical universe fairy dust that the Dwarfs "mysteriously" don't remember mining. To whom and for what purpose? Will Tink, Nova, or Leroy ever discover the truth and force everyone to go on yet another stupid magical true love field trip? I have no idea! But you KNOW that bitch is one shady lady!**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTEEN**

 **RUMBELLE IN THE JUNGLE**

It was the best of times.

It was the worst of times.

And Charles Dickens could suck his dick!

Rumplestiltskin was in a foul mood as he paced Dr. Hopper's outer office. The tale of two worlds and identities that had consumed his life was spiraling well out of his control, and whenever things were not completely in his control, both Rumplestiltskin and Mr. Gold bordered on panic attacks... which he generally curbed by redirecting that terror into anger and smashing things with his cane.

But he couldn't ransack Dr. Hopper's anteroom. Then he'd be in for anger management issues too, and probably have to join Jefferson and that idiot ex-fairy in group sessions!

Mr. Gold paced the room, a very uncomfortable thing to do, but the pain helped curb his fears as well.

It was the best of times because his son had returned from the dead.

It was the worst of times because his own life was speeding toward an end avoidable only in the premature releasing of an ancient evil that would latch onto his grandson's mother no matter what he did to try and avoid that, and apparently, if it did so, she would not be as prepared and able to wield the power as he'd hope for in his Plan B and would instead hasten this world toward a horrible ending filled with an even more absurd glorification and rewarding of violence and evil than was already the case thanks to Snow White's idiot heart-splitting.

There was something _very_ wrong with that woman. She wasn't that dimwitted in the beginning. But then, magic always came with a price... well, magic and repeated head injuries.

Which brought his thoughts to Belle.

Had he unwittingly lead his beloved to develop Stockholm Syndrome? Was it a consequence of simply being repeatedly knocked out and tied up by a variety of villains regardless of his own treatment? Or, what he suspected most, was it a consequence of Regina's "Lacy" spell after the Dark Curse had broken, eliminating the fail safes he had put in place to assure no permanent brain damage to those brought to this world (which he doubted was still in place for Pan or Snow White's casting)?

Regina was a creature of impulse who did not plan out everything, particularly where safety was concerned. She would neither have cared nor had the patience to assure that Belle's mental faculties remained sound after her little "prank" was done.

No, Rumple was ninety percent certain that his beloved had suffered brain damage, perhaps irreversible - at least without some worrying price. It had to be. It was only after she was un-Lacy'ed that Belle began to exhibit uncharacteristic behavior.

She was a woman of justice, yet she had inexplicably forgiven Hook and even _offered him sympathy_ as he'd moped outside Granny's after the Coronation. She had also become manipulative, something she had _never_ been, at least not in a devious way. And most troubling of all, she had seemed unconcerned about his confinement and shared mind with his son and what long-term mental and emotional trauma that might have caused him. The Belle _he knew_ would have insisted he go to see Archie. It shouldn't have taken _Bae_ to make that call!

And she had taken _Rumple's_ side in the matter when he'd grumbled about it instead of telling him that his son was right, which he had hoped _wouldn't_ be the case, thus confirming his suspicions that something was wrong with Belle. Oh, she didn't seem put off by the idea of helping him, just not remotely concerned that it hadn't been _her_ first thought.

There was an epidemic of _un_ -empathizing going around this town, and it couldn't just be the Moneky Herpes and whatever sluts and contracted syphilis from Hook and his many generations of skanky bootycalls who'd popped out infected little brats that Rumplestiltskin had bartered off to various royals - like Eva, for instance. Magic couldn't cure the strain Hook was carrying around like a diseased bat, but it could delay the onset of the worst symptoms - and death. Really, poor Eva would have died before her daughter's sixteenth birthday whether or not Cora had poisoned her. She'd been doomed by her father.

Rumple had been able to prevent the disease from passing on to little Snow - or so he'd thought. Perhaps he had been wrong, though. Perhaps it had merely gone dormant in her brain and had only recently begun to grow and spread, eating away at her brain tissue.

Perhaps he had miscalculated with the Curse as well, failed to spot some innately malicious side-effect hidden in the original orb that was amplifying all of these negatives, still working against the Savior's ability to break it... though given it had been broken, yet not entirely, and was being recast over and over in different variations based upon the intentions and ingredients of the casters... well... trying to figure it out now was probably futile without permanently self-destructing the town and sending them back to the Enchanted Forest using the remaining energy of the Curse that sustained it being hidden and magic-filled and then closing that hole in the universes.

And _that_ wouldn't be easy. Each time the Curse was cast and the matter/engery transfer occurred, the soft spot between the universes grew softer and thus harder to permanently close.

Of course, the big problem was if this happened _too many times_ and the universes attempted to combine. A small magical pocket was one thing, and a dangerous thing at that he'd foolishly created, but if The Enchanted Forest and the Land Without Magic attempted to coexist, an impossibility, one of those universes would be obliterated in a horrific storm unlike anything ever seen before.

Which, he supposed, from what little Bae had told him about the future alternate universe was probably what ultimately happened. That future Dark One cast one last Curse and _kaboom: reality over_. In that case, it seemed it was the fairy tale world that ceased to exist, which was certainly something to take under advisement in any future portal-creation here.

If it came to _Us vs. Them_ , it wasn't going to be a small town in Maine or the minimally populated feudal state forest they came from that took down the technological Goliath of seven plus billion souls.

The door to the office opened, interrupting Rumple's pacing and Regina exited, looking surprised and annoyed that she'd been caught.

"I am signing Henry back up for therapy," she stated with a snooty look. "He's had too much interaction with the pirate and Emma's stint at single parenting was clearly substandard."

"No doubt," Rumple agreed, discerning that her defensive remark wasn't a lie, but also not the whole truth. He was no fool. And everyone in town had heard by now that things between her and Robin were on the rocks. Rightly so. That man was a doofus of the highest order, and even a deluded villain with an ego the size of Antarctica like Regina at least deserved someone she could have intellectually stimulating conversations with, particularly about magic, the vice she was trying to turn into a virtue... or had been, anyway, before her mother derailed that.

Rumple sympathized, even if he disliked Regina immensely due to her lack of patience, gratitude, and always storming into his shop demanding things when she, at least, should have the wits to know better!

"I suppose you're here to make some shady deal," Regina scoffed while the bumbling new receptionist flipped through a calendar to make an appointment for Henry.

"No. My son threatened me. He's forcing me to go to therapy."

Regina snorted. "I guess Henry's sperm donar does have bigger balls than I thought."

While Rumple glowered at her calling Bae that, he wasn't able to get in a snide remark as Dr. Hopper interjected a chipper, "Mr. Gold, come on in."

* * *

The hour was one of the most excruciating that Rumple had ever endured. When it was done, Dr. Hopper smiled cheerfully as he always did - in that extremely annoying way because no one should be that pleasant all of the time!

"We've made real progress! Next time, we'll have Belle join us. It's all well and good to read about PTSD, but she needs to know what you're feeling, and something tells me you won't be forthcoming with your nightmares and this magical heart diseases business otherwise."

"Fine," Rumple grumbled and then limped out of the office... and paused to find Hook sitting in one of the chairs on a hot pink donut pillow.

"Why are you sitting on that?"

Hook glowered at him. "Because Nurse Ratched arse raped me with some magical spy glass! And then she further tormented me by saying they only had pink cushions! I am physically and psychologically damaged."

"That sounds accurate," scoffed Rumple.

"Shut up, Crocodile!"

Rolling his eyes and flipping Hook off, Rumple left the office and made his way to Granny's where Belle was waiting with an iced tea.

Tinkerbell promptly brought them both hamburgers and a basket of fries.

"Is that Henry's book?" Rumple asked.

"Are you trying to deflect from my asking how your session went?"

"You can ask Dr. Hopper's opinion next week when you're supposed to join me," sighed Rumple.

Belle frowned, but let it go and confirmed, "Yes, but it's different than the last time I read it. There are more details now. Neal said it's likely the result of removing the Author, which seems a good hypothesis. That Pinocchio's story wasn't included seems very likely his ability to influence the book from the inside."

"Yes, probably," sighed Rumple. Bae wouldn't tell him what he'd done with the page. And, worse, he'd had someone - probably the damned ex-fairy - place a spell on it so Rumple couldn't find it to release the little turd and blackmail him into using his skills to change things as a quick fix for his heart condition.

As such, the plan to extort Hook and kidnap the Apprentice had been delayed. Not that the pirate would be any good as muscle when he was staggering around crying about his bloody arsehole.

"We need to come up with a viable way to remove and contain him," Belle continued as she dipped some salty fries in ketchup. "He sounds like a megalomaniacal homicidal lunatic who wants to destroy our entire world to get on the New York Times Best Seller List. As much as I love books, _that's insane_. But the moment anyone looking for a different story learns about him, they'll try to get him one of those magic quills and ink, and do we really know that destroying all of the blank books that Merlin presumably created will make it impossible to use that magic?"

"No, we don't," Rumple conceded. "We don't even know if Merlin actually created the books or if it was some task he set upon his apprentice, and I don't that old creep would say. All I have discerned is that the paper in the books is magically... harmonic with the ink. Quite likely, the pages were created from magical trees, which could explain why they are extinct, or at least assumed to be. But that doesn't mean they are or that they don't exist in other worlds. Pinocchio acquired just enough of both to use in his typewriter to find Bae, which means there has to be a seller of it somewhere in this world - which he could tell us if he wasn't a six year old boy."

"Rumple, you're not thinking of re-aging him! Geppetto just got him back!"

"Geppetto is a psychologically damaged man who chose to associate with a cricket who killed his parents and recreate his childhood trauma through building himself a child using _an endangered magical tree_ instead of making connections with actual humans _and not cutting down endangered magical trees_. He then caused Emma to grow up an orphan because of his fear of losing a _puppet_. The man is mental. He shouldn't be raising a child."

"Okay, you may have a point," Belle conceded, "but at least leave him be until it's absolutely necessary to find out where he bought the paper and ink, Rumple. From what Ruby said, before I decided to hate her for leaving me tied up and completely forgetting about me," she amended, "August was very obviously looking to get into Emma's pants and purposely misled her into still thinking Neal had betrayed her. Those two don't need yet another horny idiot in leather complication!"

"You may have a point," Rumple agreed, "though I don't know that the pirate is going to be up for any competitive courting. I understand there was some 'accidental' tearing while removing some polyps that may or may not have actually existed," he snorted.

Belle rolled her eyes at his gleeful look. "Rumple, don't be insensitive! I know Hook has done some horrible things, but Nurse Ratched is a medical professional, and whatever personal vendetta she has against him, she shouldn't have taken it out on him while he was incapacitated and in such a... delicate way."

"A cursed degree does not a professional make. The woman is as much a sadist now as she was in the Enchanted Forest. And the pirate should just be grateful he doesn't have to shit in a colostomy bag. I know you are a forgiving soul, Belle, but the man beat you up and shot you," Rumple sighed. "Forgiving me doesn't mean you have to forgive everyone who hurt you, particularly as he is not sorry in the least!"

"Well, perhaps not, but he helps me organize the books when no one else seems to even notice the Library exists."

"Yes, well, people are wary of entering a place built on top of a dragon's lair and currently occupied by the ghost sand monster of said sorceress who was trapped in incorporeal form, unable to die, in order to guard a doomsday device, and even with that gone has been left in torment, because that is how Regina repays friendship."

After swallowing a bite of burger, Rumple amended, "On an aside, Regina is going to therapy again. And sending Henry again as well."

"About time," sighed Belle. "That woman's a stone cold lunatic. And between the car related property damage and Hook teaching Henry to cheat - and getting Henry to teach him how to use his new phone to take upskirt pictures of the waitresses... thankfully, Tinkerbell confiscated it and kicked him in the butt."

Rumple snorted. "No wonder he was particularly mopey at Hopper's. I swear, he is the most spineless, whiny, 'delicate' villain I have ever met. And I once spent a weekend in Far Far Away Land listening to a very short egomaniac wax delusional about true love and dark magical conquest."

"I didn't know," interjected Tinkerbell as she brought the check, "that you had a twin in Far Far Away Land."

"Just for that," hissed Rumple, "no tip!"

"Impotent geezer!" the ex-fairy accused.

"Incompetent slut!"

"You wanna take this outside, old man? I'll punch you in the tits! I may float like a fairy, but I sting like a motherfucking chimaera!"

"You also have anger management issues!" snapped Belle, grabbing her coat. "The _both_ of you!" she amended as she wondered for the bazillionth time what she really saw in Rumplestiltskin other than her older man in a fancy suit fetish. "You've reminded me why I like the solitude of the Library."

Also, Belle mused as she considered the ruberband she found in her burger, the food at Granny's was getting pretty bad since Ruby had quit. She probably shouldn't have read that Upton Sinclair novel, now that she thought about it...

* * *

AN: Far Far Away Land is from _Shrek_. The two universe storm thing is from _Fringe_. Oh, and did you catch my geeky title puns?

Next up: Neal has a chat with Robin.


	31. Don't Be a Menace to Storybrooke

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTEEN**

 **DON'T BE A MENACE TO STORYBROOKE WHILE DRINKING YOUR JUICE IN ROBIN'S HOOD**

"Dude, you're an idiot," Neal told the man sitting at the bar.

Robin Hood looked up from the drink he was moping in and with a bewildered expression uttered, "What?"

"An idiot," Neal repeated.

"Um... why?" asked Robin.

Neal snorted. "Let me count the ways."

He began ticking off on his finger as he spoke:

"You broke into the Dark One's castle using a stolen glamour charm you shoved up your ass."

"I didn't have a lot of options before your father shackled me to a wall!" exclaimed Robin.

"You could have _not_ used a glamour and traded that trinket to my father for a potion to save your wife instead of being tortured for weeks," said Neal, raising another finger, and before Robin could come up with an argument for that one amended:

"Your wife died under mysterious circumstances with no body, and you just chose to believe she was dead and it was all your fault."

"Will Scarlet said-"

"Will Scarlet was a traitor. And yet you never went back and questioned all of the things he told you and did during heists, especially your wife's death," Neal ticked off.

"You let a stranger use your son as monster bait," he continued, amending, "I'm not proud of that one either, but to be fair, I had recently suffered a lot of blood-loss after being shot by my fiancé who was my evil grandfather's minion, fell through a portal which have serious PTSD about, and was treated by people who think appendicitis is caused by a toad living in their stomach."

"Appendicitis?" was Robin's remark.

Neal rolled his eyes. "And also didn't get any of my pop culture references. It was really annoying."

After a pause, he continued, "And speaking of Mulan, you finally get a team member who wants to do something about the amoral cesspool the Enchanted Forest had become since the Dark Curse - or bigger amoral cesspool - and you welcomed her by making her baby-sit your kid while you and your mates got drunk and had belching and farting contests."

"It's what Marian used to do," Robin defended.

"No wonder she faked her death and went into hiding," muttered Neal.

"What was that?"

"I said, you then met a woman you knew from word of mouth and towns filled with corpses was bad news," Neal answered, "and decided because she had a heaving bosom and was known not to give a flying fuck about chastity values, that if she acted nice enough and didn't try to kill your son in the first five minutes of knowing her, then she had to be reformed and would surely spread her legs for you if you teased her enough."

"That's not entirely ac-"

"And _then_ ," Neal interrupted, "you learned Regina murdered your wife _in a public execution_ for failing to tell her where Snow White was - not that reason is relevant even - and you were like, 'that's cool, whatevers, it's all in the past. Hey, Roland, want to go get more ice cream with the hot lady who killed mommy while I take a shit in the woods?'

"I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ man!" he exclaimed, "If I'd have known Tamara was my grandfather's brainwashed homicidal minion who wanted to kidnap my son and blow up Storybrooke before I met her, and when she did, she was wearing a low cut top and said she was real sorry about all that stuff, _I would have thrown my scolding hot coffee all over her tits and told her to fuck the hell off!_ "

"But... she's sorry," Robin sputtered.

"And you're a horny asshole who's case of blue balls is so bad after twenty-nine years that you'd apparently fuck your wife's murder next to her frozen corpse _and then_ go back to screwing your wife when she thawed out in _my apartment_ because Regina who stole my keys out of my suitcase after her sister killed me and when your cursed wife that you don't even love anymore needed to leave Storybrooke to escape being turned back into the popsicle she was the day before when you were shagging Regina right next to what you were really hoping was her corpse so you'd never have to deal with her again, woke up, your true love thought, _what the hell, they can live there!_

"Which, you know, _not fucking cool, man_ ," said Neal. "But _then_ when my father showed up, you'd have been like 'Hey, Rumplestiltskin, the dude whose home I broke into and then was squatting in and who saved my wife and child's life, while you are clearly suffering a heart attack - get the fuck out of your son's home and here's his stuff that you should throw in the trash if you don't drop dead in a gutter because it's cramping my style up in this one bedroom apartment I am living in with no job or prospects and having lots and lots of sex with my wife that I still don't love, but somewhere along the way she became seriously kinky in bed, and I am totally into that and not questioning why our how, so get the fuck out, you old crippled geezer!'

Neal shook his head before continuing, "Naturally Marian would have really been Zelena, your mistress' sister, wearing your lucky asshole charm and raping you nightly and had gotten knocked up, you were like 'I must stay with her to be honorable but really only because she is suddenly so dirty in bed' for five minutes before Regina's top button came lose over a pint of beer and changed your tune to 'Let's not think about this and go bang!' _And did I mention you were cool with fucking my murderer and your own rapist in my apartment after telling my father to fuck off and die throwing my stuff in the fucking trash!?_ "

"I don't recall any of that," said Robin.

"Duh, because Emma prevented it from happening," Neal told him.

Robin's brows furrowed. "I don't understand."

"Time travel, you idiot!" sighed Neal. "Stuff that happened first because of a time travel screw up but was unwritten after more travel. Stuff that no one else remembers, but I do, because I was dead. Gives me fluidity in the space-time continuum, and that's the shit that did and thus would have gone down if Zelena had survived again.

"She'd have killed your wife instead of Regina," Neal explained, "impersonated her, raped you, gotten pregnant, and when the kid was born, you and Regina would have made a big to-do about what better people you are and how Zelena didn't deserve a second chance - you know, unlike Regina's million and one of those - and banished her to Oz so you could immediately leave your newborn and your son so you could go to the _Underworld_ to save _Hook_. Naturally, Zelena would come back from Oz, beat the shit out of Belle, and take Baby Pink Blanket or Green Bean or whatever you were calling her for the five months or whatever before you two selfish dicks actually got around to naming the kid... or renaming her, or whatever.

"Seriously, I am gonna personally ensure that Regina never gets _un-_ sterilized here," declared Neal, "and you are going to Dr. Whale in the morning to get a vasectomy to ensure you don't impregnate some other villain with a vendetta against Regina who can shapeshift or just get you slightly tipsy."

Robin scowled at him and blubbered, "Why are you being so mean, mate? I thought we were friends."

"Friends don't use their friends' kids as bait, you idiot! We knew each other for like ten hours at the most. Which is the only reason you're excused for sleeping through my funeral service!"

"I couldn't help it, it was _boring_ ," Robin retorted. "Just like you."

"Yeah, well, at least I have more than one facial expression and a modicum of honor," argued Neal. "I was also in Neverland, _and you weren't_ , so I know all about Pan's truth magic and that Regina said _and meant it_ that she would murder and rape and destroy worlds all over again just to get Henry - a child she took fraudulently who only existed because she destroyed Emma's family. The fact that her kiss broke a spell is actually meaningless, since all those castings of the Dark Curse fucked up how magic works in this world - where it was _already_ fucked up - and especially because Emma's parents refused to pay the price for it.

"True love here is complete bullshit, Robin," Neal told him. "The way things are going, Charles Manson could probably revive Sharon Tate with a smoochy and they'd fall in love and raise her kid together as soulmates."

"I have no idea who those people are."

"A psychopathic asshole and the pregnant woman he killed and mutilated. Which, around here, is just about the makings of an epic love story."

"I think that's a bit exaggerated."

"Did I mention the part where you were going to get raped by your lover's sister and insist on staying with your pregnant rapist to raise your rape baby with her?"

"Please stop saying-"

"Rape baby?" Neal cut him off. "It's what the kid was. And she's not real. Trying to sugar coat it with some bullshit that you're uncomfortable or it's unfair to little Pink Blanket who doesn't even understand her own bowl movements is just a half-assed way to try and get out of admitting that you're an amoral sicko who's into other amoral sickos."

Neal pointed at him, demanding, "Just admit it already and stop calling yourself an honorable man, Robin. Embrace our sick psychopath fetish. Admit it, you're the male version of those chicks who get engaged to incarcerated serial killers. And if that's your thing, stop pretending otherwise. But don't drag your kid into it. Give him a chance to escape your end of the gene pool with some nurturing that doesn't include a stepmother who gaslit her stolen baby into thinking he was crazy before poisoning him and wiping his memory of her plan to kill everyone he loved and kidnap him to raise alone with just her in her big castle Bates Motel style."

After a pause, Neal considered, "At least if Regina is out of the equation, you've got the Merry Men helping you, and sure they're a bunch of uneducated doofuses, but at least Little John seems nice... apart from the Monkey Herpes."

"Monkey Herpes?"

"From being a Flying Monkey. It's why they're insane and don't live very long without Zelena's magical intervention. I guess Walsh had regular herpes and it mutated when Zelena transformed him and was transmitted by his bites. Between that and the syphilis Hook passed around into generations of royals through all of his bar maid raping and my father's secret bastard baby trade hobby, this town should have a public health emergency declared. Hope that strange midnight supply train from nowhere has a lot of condoms and penicillin or half the town will look like they tried to fuck a toad - which is not actually how people get genital warts, just so you know."

"Are you quite done?" sighed Robin.

"No. You also smell like the forest," said Neal, "and not like the Old Spice forest. More like that forest where Regina killed those hundreds of people and left their bodies to rot. Seriously, dude, shower _using soap_ and then put on _deodorant_ and clothes you haven't worn for a week _and washed in a washing machine with detergent and bleach_."

"Are you saying I stink?" Robin asked, brows furrowed.

Neal threw some money on the bar, unable to take that befuddled Cletus The Slack-jawed Yokel expression any longer.

"Maybe you should get your head examined, Robin," he told the blonde man. "You must have whatever traumatic brain injury Emma's mom is suffering from, because I don't have the words to accurately describe the amount of stupid sitting next to me right now."

He got up and headed for the door then, leaving Robin still sporting that expression.

"Careful," said the man sitting a few stools down, "it might stick that way."

"Fuck off, Nottingham!" growled Robin.

"It's _Keith_!" the ex-Sheriff spat back. "And I shagged the Evil Bitch Queen first!"

Robin leapt up and pinned 'Keith' against the bar. "Liar! You take that back! Regina said she hadn't been with anyone since Daniel!"

"Well _conceptually_ ," scoffed Nottingham. "Her mummy dosed her with a lust potion on our first date. And the bitch totally raped this town's former sheriff for like... forty years."

He grinned. "But hey, if what Dark One Junior said is true, I guess you're into that shit!"

"Shut up before I pull your tongue out!"

"Been there, done that," said the former Sheriff, pushing him off, and being slightly less drunk and thus having the advantage. "Admit it, Hood, you're no better than I am. You're not honorable, you're just desperate to not be who you really are, because deep down it fills you with shame that you're _not_ an honorable man. That you _didn't_ love your wife. That everything you've done has been to keep up appearances - until you met Regina, and thanks to all the heroes being delusional morons, you could be with a psychopath and still be considered a good man. Well, you _can't_. So either you stop trying to be and embrace the evil pussy, or you start trying for realsies to be a good guy by putting your son first for the first time in his short life."

Robin glared at the other man. "When the hell did you get so introspective?"

"After Rumplestiltskin cut out my tongue for like a whole fucking year because he up and committed murder suicide a couple of days after hacking it off," said Nottingham. "I only got it back yesterday, because I sent him a 'Glad you got resurrected/sorry to hear about being held prisoner and molested by a crazy bitch' card.' Pretty sure I'm the only one who sent one, despite not being present or specifically included in the 'dying to save you' thing.

"You people are all selfish pricks," concluded Keith as he too paid his bill and staggered off.

Robin sighed and decided he'd had enough soul searching. To the bartender he said, "Put it on my tab, Micky."

He was already lost in hazy, Homer Simpson-like thought as the man behind the bar shouted after him, "It's 'Mike', you selfish prick!"

* * *

AN: Sooooo did I beat the dead horse enough of how much I FUCKING HATE morons who keep insisting that I not use the term "rape baby" for Pink Blanket because it's "insulting and will emotionally traumatize" Pink Blanket A FUCKING FICTIONAL CHARACTER WHO IS A RAPE BABY? So, yeah, those people suck flying monkey balls. Anyway, Robin is a doofus and I hate his character and see nothing redeeming about him. He's not a lovable Forest Gump doofus, he's just a doofus. And where Hook has his pretty boy looks and floor-kissing qualities that redeem him on a comic relief level, Robin is just... ugh... taking up space! He's a Marty Stu who acts like those serial killer fangirls. If Snow White acquired some intelligence-reducing illness, Robin Hood was just born stupid, and short of some _Flowers for Algernon_ plot device, there's no cure for his dumbshittery. (The toad thing is from "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber", an old Steve Martin SNL sketch.)

Next up: Neal and Henry finally bond over ice cream, which can't lead to anything good.


	32. I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SEVENTEEN**

 **I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM... BECAUSE THE ICE CREAM LADY IS A PSYCHOTIC SNOW WITCH!**

"I can't believe my grandparents still haven't named my uncle," snorted Henry as he walked with his dad down Main Street. "I mean, how hard can it be to name a baby?"

Technically, he was supposed to be in school, but ever since the Curse broke, school was more like college in that kids just ditched whenever they felt like it and no one seemed to really notice.

There wasn't much motivation to go to school and learn about a world they could never see outside of Storybrooke, professions that were pointless here, and neither were they much interested in learning about the abysmally sexist, racist, and classist world they might well still be doomed to return to when the magic that sustained Storybrooke inevitably ran out and their parents, who had some insane nostalgia for that disenchanted pile of social inequality and bigotry, would force them all to jump through some portal back to open sewers and chastity belts.

And, yes, Henry knew what chastity belts were no thanks to listening to Hook during their shared incarceration, a night that would probably give him nightmares until he was old and gray and balding... like Hook, who had threatened him with bodily harm if he told anyone that he'd started losing his hair about fifty years ago during his trips outside of Neverland and was now on some cocktail of drugs from Dr. Whale that used werewolf spit from Ruby that he hoped could replicate the pomade made from werewolf cum that he'd been using in the Enchanted Forest to curb his male pattern baldness as Neverland's magic began to fade and time was no longer quite so standing still.

In short, Henry was traumatized and hadn't objected to Regina saying he needed to go back to therapy. His first session was tomorrow, and he was hoping Dr. Hopper could give him some anti-anxiety meds for dealing with all of the stuff he now knew about Hook's anatomy and sexual function - or dysfunction. Emma had truly and maliciously punished him!

"Well, considering all the people in your family named for assholes and namesaking victims of those assholes by the aforementioned assholes, and just thewhole 'Snow White' in general as a name, taking their time might not be a bad thing," Neal considered.

"I guess that's true," agreed Henry.

"Hey, my mother hated me so much she named me 'fatal fire' and a fucking candle flame got me killed," continued Neal who amended, "Also, don't tell either of your mothers I said 'assholes' and 'fucking' or I might end up like Hook."

"Names have power. Shitty tragic power," sighed Henry. "Regina was named by her bat-crap crazy mother who wanted her to be Queen. Emma was named by an old lady with hearing problems and a blanket-"

"And toting that abandonment blanket and the name it gave her around for twenty-eight years kinda screwed her up real bad, yeah," concluded Neal.

"What do you suppose being named by your mother after her father that she murdered and her lover that her mother murdered means?"

"Well, realizing you could end up screwed up is the first step to not ending up screwed up," Neal advised. "You just gotta find a better, healthier, connotation for your name than your patricided grandpa and your mom's murdered first lover who tried to strangle you to death after being resurrected as a monster."

"Yeah, still not exactly over that one either."

"You could also change your name," suggested Neal, "though I've been told that's not entirely healthy either, the not dealing with the shitty name that screwed you over. Still, 'Baelfire' is an awful name. First time I used it, the social services people thought I was some Bosnian refugee who'd stowed away on a ship. Only reason I got a social security number and a way into the system that is existence in this world. Didn't figure that was something I wanted to be defined by either, even if the 'my father was a warlord' story was believable enough, so when I finally got free, I took an alias from a poet I liked... though, to be fair, I didn't actually intend to emulate the whole under-aged pregnant wife thing. And I don't do dudes, not that there's anything wrong with swinging both ways... just not while drugging and boozing it up around the country, probably. So... don't do that."

"Ah... okay."

"And that includes Pixie Dust, Avalon Sand, and whatever other magical narcotic shit my father and your mom probably have bottled in their basements. You've seen what pixie dust has done to Regina and Robin. That crap is still in their systems making them obsess over each other like teenage idiots. To say nothing of Emma and Hook getting dosed in Neverland."

Henry grimaced. "Which is kinda half my fault since Pan conned me into tossing that stuff around," he sighed. "I basically soul-mated them."

"You can't really soul-mate people, just fake them out with magic, and pixie dust is the most potent of that," Neal said. "No way to even know for sure if Regina and Robin are soulmates or if the Blue Fairy set Tinkerbell up to ensure that Regina would continue down her path to darkness so she'd cast my father's curse. I wouldn't put it past her after she gave me that bean to get rid of him and when that failed did jack shit to find me. I'd punch her in the tits too if that was socially acceptable, to be honest.

"Also, don't say 'tits'. Only women can say 'tits' without it being sexist."

"Then why do women think it's sexy when Hook says it?"

"Because he's pretty. Women are just as shallow as men."

"So... they'd think he was a creepy pervert if they knew he had more real hair on his chest than his head?"

Neal nearly walked into a lamp post. "Hook is bald?"

Hook just happened to be walking carefully out of Any Given Sundae with a cup of rum raisin ice cream, glared at Henry, and hissed, "Bald _ing_. And not anymore! I'm taking meds, okay! You can't tell anyone! My looks are my only marketable commodity! I'd be destitute without them!"

Neal crossed his arms, "You stop hitting on Emma, _because that is not gonna happen with or without hair on your head_ , and I won't tell anyone you're taking hair tonic to keep from looking like a giant penis. Speaking of which, your leather foreskin really smells."

Hook glared and defended, "It's Zelena's death stink! I was locked in that bloody cell all night!"

"Guess you should have let me keep the coat then," smirked Neal. "Too bad you can't wash leather. Maybe my pops has a spell for dead witch stink... for a price, of course."

The pirate gave him the finger and then gingerly crossed the street.

"He's such a tool," sighed Henry, heading into the ice cream shop.

* * *

Ingrid - or Sarah Fisher as she went by in Storybrooke just in case Regina tied her to a non-cursed name, even though that was unlikely since she altered Regina's memories - had been the purveyor of Any Given Sundae since 2001: so named for her love of Cameron Diaz, sports that caused head injuries resulting in memory loss, and puns.

After she'd failed to locate Emma, Ingrid decided to just wait for her in the boring little town where nothing happened, which wasn't much different than her castle when she wasn't allowed out because of her powers.

Over the years, while waiting for a prophesy foretold by a creepy old sorcerer, Sarah had learned everyone's favorite ice cream flavor.

Snow White liked "Winter White Chocolate" though it was now fat free vanilla frozen yogurt to drop the baby weight. Spoiler alert: the yogurt was not remotely fat free and the woman was going to remain the size of a small blimp if she kept it up!

Her husband, though only a recent customer, liked "Old Fashioned Butter Pecan". He was an old-timey sort of guy with the flannel, the truck, and not realizing that chivalry should be dead because it was more like chauvinism.

Their daughter was a "Rocky Road" girl. Hers certainly had been. Considering how often Emma came to buy pints of the stuff, it was surprising she could fit in her ass-tight jeans... but then she must have gotten her father's metabolism, lucky girl.

Regina, since the Curse was broken, had switched to "Black Walnut", because apparently Dr. Hopper felt she needed to make small changes in her life as part of her (half-assed at best) redemption journey. At least she'd chosen something more refined than her goober of a (ex)boyfriend who'd come in here a few days ago to buy a whole gallon of "Cookie Dough" which he said was for Roland, but she knew he was just going to sit out in the woods and eat the whole thing!

And then there was Henry, the kid who used to love chocolate, but ever since his return from New York City-

"German Chocolate Cake in a sugar cone!" Henry ordered.

"Someone's growing up," said Ingrid with a wink at Neal. "He used to be a straight chocolate kid."

Henry rolled his eyes and Ingrid asked Neal, "Can I interest you in a sample of my newest limited time flavor?"

"Love Potion Number Thirty-One?" Neal noted the flavor which looked like the Snow Queen blew someone up and then froze their liquefied insides. "No thanks. I'll take a scoop of 'Pumpkin Pie' and a scoop of 'Nutty Coconut' in a waffle cone."

"An odd combination, but the customer is always right."

"What can I say? I'm an enigma. I'd say it was two conflicting identities, but I was spared the whole Curse thing," Neal replied. "Must be hard, reconciling that."

"There are days it gives me headaches."

"I'll bet."

* * *

Back outside with their ice cream, Henry asked, "So... that's it? We just wait."

"Tracking charm on the money should lead us to her magical mobile meth lab... or whatever it is she does in it other than obsessing over Emma."

"That's so creepy," said Henry. "I mean, this town is full of creepy people with crazy ideas, but believing there's a prophesy that her niece and my mom are the reincarnations of her dead sisters is nuts..."

"Particularly since Elsa's mother died after she was born," scoffed Neal, "but I think it's more like a belief she can drag their souls back from the Underworld and swap them with Emma and Elsa. Of course, with Elsa still stuck in that urn back in the Dark Castle, she'll be waiting for a long time, while Mickey Mouse is probably miffed and panicking that his carefully manipulated prophesy that would turn Emma into the Dark One and bring her to Camelot to free Merlin, so Merlin could die, and the Dark Ones could unleash the Underworld upon humanity or in some other way unravel the fabric of reality isn't going according to plan."

"You really think that's what the guy who owns that big mansion wants?"

"It's a theory in progress," Neal admitted, "but nothing he did has been beneficial to anyone nor functioned by Merlin's ethical code. It's possible Isaac hated him and was trying to undermine him for a good reason -he just decided to do it for selfish reasons rather than saving humanity. Either way, Merlin's apprentice is a douchebag who employed another douchebag, and Merlin is probably better off staying a tree."

"I still don't get how Mom met Merlin when she was little if he had already been turned into a tree by Nimue, who shouldn't even have existed as a physical person anymore because the Dark One curse had been transferred."

Neal patted him on the back. "Don't strain your brain, Henry. Like I said, history was retroactively rewritten, so not all of that would have happened this time where things didn't get screwed up by Zelena's spell. There really is only one Dark One at a time, but unraveling reality split and multiplied the Darkness, creating more Dark Ones than could logically have even existed between the time of Nimue and my father. It was a lot of compounding paradoxes that weakened reality to the point that one final spell ended the universe."

"After this universe was already ended by the creation of that one, because two universes can't coexist on the same plain of reality and you can only really travel forward in time because traveling backward in time creates a paradox that negates you existing and/or the circumstances under which you'd go back in time, hence a new universe with a different history had to be created, but the circumstances under which it was created made it defective."

"Yes, exactly," Neal confirmed. "You've got a mind for this sort of thing, Henry."

"Yeah, well, lot of good science and math'll do me here or in the Enchanted Forest," he grumbled. "I could go to Mars or something, but instead I'm stuck here. I mean, I didn't want Emma to leave and not be with her parents just because she was afraid of bad stuff happening, and I don't want to not have contact with my mom, because she _is_ my mom, and I want her to be a better person, and I don't think she would if I wasn't around to keep her from killing people... But I'd like to have a choice, you know? To one day be able to choose my own path. It's just... I didn't think it through, exactly."

"Your heart was in the right place, and I'm sure you're smart enough that you can fake a degree from MIT."

Henry smiled at that. "Thanks, Dad."

* * *

AN: I know, I know, making fun of Ginny's baby weight isn't cool, but she really put on the pounds and took absurdly long to lose them considering how little screetime she had. And, okay, it's mean to call out Colin's balding noggin, but rumor has it he's looking to get hair plugs because he's embarrassed by how his hair (and presumably that awful toupee) look on screen. Between the two of them, kudos to Ginny for not being vane! I don't remember what flavor Regina was given in that dumb retcon flashback to explain Ingrid being in Storybrooke, sorry. Or if Emma was given a flavor when she remembered arguing with Ingrid in the ice cream shop. If anyone does, I'll put that in. (Question: If Hook only has one hand, how does he carry a cup of ice cream and use that tiny little pink plastic spoon? Beats me!)

Next up: Ingrid builds an ice wall to keep out Mexicans... or something... not like anyone really gives a shit, am I right?


	33. The Border Anti Emigration Ice Wall

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER EIGHTEEN**

 **THE BORDER ANTI EMIGRATION ICE WALL**

When the power went out without any warning, Emma found herself with a delayed case of deja vu as she stood in front of an ice wall with a bleary-eyed Neal who'd woken her from a sound sleep to inform her that A) the power was out and B) her cell phone had obviously ceased charging and the battery was dead because the power was out.

"What did you do?" Emma accused.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Neal huffed.

"Obviously, you tipped her off somehow!"

Neal rubbed the back of his neck, "Well... I might have taken some of her creepy momentos from her ice cream truck."

"Neal!"

"What!? How am I supposed to know that crazy woman would go to her broke-down rented warehouse space where she keeps the truck in the winter and go through her Emmabelia."

"Emmabelia?"

"Emma and memorabilia-"

"I get it. It's just lame, Neal."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry if I'm less witty than usual at three in the-"

The bushes rustled, Emma drew her gun - and, of course, Hook emerged.

"Where the _hell_ did you come from?" Neal exclaimed.

"Granny's."

"That's five miles away!"

"Maybe I like to take long contemplative walks in the woods, mate."

"Or maybe you were drunk and you got lost."

"Yes, well, regardless," said Hook, "I noticed the power grid was down. Haven't found the line this thing cut, though."

Crossing her arms, Emma inquired, "How do you even know how a power grid works? It took Henry two weeks just to teach you how to answer a cell phone without hanging it up."

"He probably asked Belle," Neal considered. "Most of the clever things he says are things Belle told him. That's why he wants to hang around her, to mine her cleverness."

"I am plenty clever on my own!"

"You were trapped in Neverland and worked for a sixteen year old boy for three hundred years. You repeatedly failed to kill my father. Every evil plot you've been involved in is just attaching your revenge obsession onto the clever plot of some other villain."

"Why waste time and energy coming up with plots when you can just join one already in progress?" Hook argued.

"You mean why waste the time you can spend drinking and shagging unconscious women?"

"Not completely unconscious. Where's the fun in that?"

"You're disgusting."

"And you're ugly. Far too homely for Emma now that she's blossomed into a beautiful swan," replied Hook while wagging a brow at Emma.

"Yeah, well, at least I'm not going ba-"

"LOOK A CLUE!" Hook shouted while glaring at Neal.

The pirate had very obviously dropped out of his pocket a little pink plastic sample spoon.

"You had that on you the whole time," Neal stated.

"No, just since I found it over there," he pointed into the woods.

"Then why not show us earlier?" groaned Emma.

"He obviously wanted to find it while you were here, so he could look more heroic, and also so that maybe you'd be the one to bend over and pick it up so he could ogle your butt," Neal answered.

Hook just glared at him.

Emma rolled her eyes. "I don't need to pick it up, though I suppose I could fine Hook for littering."

"Oh, come on! I'm trying to help!"

"And ogle my butt!"

"It's not my fault you have a very nice-" He caught himself as Neal, standing behind Emma started pulling at his hair and smirking, "...er... investigative skills."

Emma blinked at the nonsensical statement. "Okaaaaay. I need to notify the power company. And my mother. See if they can't isolate the affected line and reroute the power. Then we're going for ice cream."

"Shotgun!" Hook exclaimed and hurried into the repaired Bug.

"Hell no! You are not riding in the Bug again!" Neal shouted, but Hook had already gotten into the passenger seat. He gave Emma a woeful look.

"You can't make me ride with him _in the Bug_. Make him get out!"

"Neal..."

"I's bad enough you road from New York here with him in it _and_ you defiled it in that other timeline!"

"We never _had sex_ in it!"

"No, you just made out like horny teenagers. You know, _like we used to be_ ," he complained.

"Oh my God, Neal, you are not going to guilt-trip me at three in the fucking morning for something I did in another lifetime _without my soul_. You think I like remembering any of what I did with him? I want to take a shower from the inside out. But I can't."

"But-"

"Just kick the back of his seat or something!"

"Or you could ride in the back."

"I'm the Sheriff."

"It's not the patrol car."

"I'm still the Sheriff."

"You just don't want me to ever drive the Bug again."

"Oh, for Christ's sake!"

Emma handed Neal the keys and stomped to the Bug, flipping the driver's seat forward to get into the back.

"Why are you riding back there, Swan?" Hook asked.

Getting into the driver's seat, Neal answered, "I told her she could get a good look at your ba-"

"What are you waiting for, mate!?" Hook cut him off. "There's some evil ice maker on the lose!"

Neal groaned and turned the car back toward Storybrooke.

Thankfully, it was a short drive and Neal pulled up outside Any Given Sundae just as The Charmings were emerging from the Loft across the street.

As Emma went to talk to them, Neal observed, "Hey, what happened to your coat?"

"I sent it out to get defunkified, what do you think?"

"My father?"

"No, of course not! I'm not that stupid," Hook huffed, his tone and posture making it obvious he was that stupid.

"What did he make you do in exchange?"

"Nothing. I told you, I didn't go to the Crocodile. Stop pestering me about my bloody coat! And stop making jokes about my affliction! You promised!"

"Fine. I'll stop joking about your 'affliction'. You could just shave your head, you know, instead of taking some experimental medication that could turn you into a werewolf. I gotta say, you're chest is looking a bit furrier than usual. It's almost the full moon..."

"Shut up! There's nothing overly furry about my chest hair!" Hook pouted while covering his exposed chest with his hand.

"Do I even want to know?" sighed Emma as she returned with David and Snow following.

"No," both men answered.

"Good."

Emma turned to Neal, "Please tell me Ingrid didn't find the GPS you put on her truck?"

"Still there," he replied, holding up his cell phone. "She's in the woods near Pop's cabin."

"Wonderful. Another trip to the woods," sighed Emma. "We might as well make sure she hasn't left anything in the shop, though I don't think she has any more memory stones..."

"Memory stones?" asked David.

"From Arendelle where your friends that you shouldn't have are from, because it makes no logical sense for a shepherd to be friends with an ice merchant from across an ocean, so I know you two were up to something illegal," Emma told her father and eyed him suspiciously. "Did you try to kill Bo Peep?"

David blinked. "Who told you that? Of course not! Yes, she was a shady tax collector who demanded extra payment for keeping George from turning our town into a resort spa... but better having a farm and a home than being indentured into hitting nobleman with seawe-"

There was a loud _clank_ as Hook knocked off the doorknob with his hook.

"What the hell, man!?" Neal exclaimed.

"What? You're concerned about protecting the property of a woman who might want to freeze us all to death?"

"You don't have to just bash everything! Some things call for finesse, something you wouldn't know."

"I have finessed many a woman!"

"Getting an unhappy housewife drunk and giving her syphilis is not 'finesse'!"

"Well, at least I didn't give any of them more children like their useless troll husbands who demanded they pop out as many little brats as possible!"

"Because you shagged them in the ass!"

Snow made a horrified face and David grimaced, "That's just wrong, Hook."

"They liked it! Why won't anyone believe me that they liked it!?"

"Because no woman likes anal, Hook," Emma told him. "Oh, sure, they'll say they're willing to try it if a guy is hot enough and they're desperate enough to keep him from straying to the next woman who'll say she's willing to try it... and so on and so forth. But none of us like it."

"It's true, we don't," conceded Snow and she gave David a look. "Also, we never buy the 'I slipped' excuse."

"Oh, come on!"

"Okay, I think I need to join Henry in therapy," groaned Emma.

"Hey," Neal piped up as they all entered the shop, "I may not have the prettiest face, but I never slipped."

"I never slipped either!" Hook defended.

"That's actually not helping you look better," David told him.

"Damn it. I hate this family!" the pirate howled.

Emma and Neal both snorted at that, which drew a suspicious look from Hook.

"What? What was that?" Hook demanded and when they said nothing, he glared at Neal. "You _did_ tell her, didn't you!? I thought we had a Bro Code thing! How could you!"

"Bro Code?"

"Yes, 'Bro Code'. Smee said it's a real thing, as in 'bros before hoes'."

"Yes, well, this 'hoe' is the mother of my child and you're trying to sleep with her! Pretty sure you killed any 'bro code' we might have reestablished _if_ you'd apologized for handing me over to Pan, _but_ you didn't. You babbled some bullshit about not letting a woman come between us, like it was my fault, hugged me, and then walked out after joking that I was a villain _and then tried to sleep with Emma_."

"Well, I'm sorry! She's just really _really_ hot! You obviously understand that since you got her pregnant! And there's just some secrets told in confidence that you don't reveal, _Neal_! And the most sacred one is to do with a mate's follicular difficulties! Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? I have gone three hundred years with a lush head of hair that has enticed many a woman to partake of my rum-"

"Ewe," muttered Emma, Snow, and David.

"And now I am trapped in a strange world that I barely understand, without my ship, a ship I sacrificed to get to Emma so she could regain her memories and save her family, and replay my heroic sacrifice with sexual favors, but now any chance I might have had to continue my gallant pursuit of her has now been derailed! Every time she looks at me, she will see me looking like Leroy. _Leroy_. That's even worse than looking like you! You've ruined my dream!"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Over dramatic much? _Neal_ didn't tell me you were going bald."

"Wait... you... _you tricked me_!?" he accused Neal.

"Well, kinda, yeah," he snorted.

"I already knew," she sighed. "Don't blame him for being an ass."

Hook looked momentarily hopeful. "So... all this time...?"

"No, only since right before the barn thing."

His expression fell. "When you started saying you want nothing to do with me! You were just trying to put me down gently without revealing that you knew my horrible secret. That's very sporting of you, Swan."

David cleared his throat. "Not to interrupt, but can we perhaps stop pandering to Hook's insecurity over losing his looks and get back to the memory stones?"

"Right," Emma agreed, while Hook went to get a gallon of rum raisin ice cream. "They're stones from Arendelle that can take and store memories, but can also restore memories lost due to head trauma or other magical intervention. So, if you accidentally set your dreamcatcher on fire after putting your memories in it, a memory stone is your best bet to get them back.

"Anyway, Sarah Fisher, who is really Ingrid, dethroned Queen of Arendelle, came through the magic wardrobe that the Apprentice has in his house, which at the time was in the Enchanted Forest, so she ended up in New York City for some reason. He told her there was a prophesy that I would get to this world in a couple of years and when I grew up I could help her get her sisters back and return her home to rule Arendelle with them."

"Get them back from where?" asked Snow.

"Death. They were both dead. Her interpretation of the prophesy, which is really just bullshit the guy made up in part of his twisted anarchy plot, I guess after generations of having to clean up Merlin's Dark One mess without him, is that her niece Elsa and I will be hosts for their souls, which she can somehow summon by using magical yellow ribbons they all had as children that Rumplestiltskin took as payment for a means to control Ingrid's ice powers... with which he threw in a 'last resort' in the form of a magical urn."

"Iss an't end gwell," said Hook through a mouthful of ice cream.

"It doesn't," sighed Emma. "Ingrid's youngest sister was dating a duke who just wanted to get control of the throne. When Ingrid found out his true motives, she tried to use her ice powers to stop him. He tried to rape her. Then he tried to rape her sister. She tried to ice him to save her sister, but the bastard threw her in front of the spell and she shattered. After he ran off, her other sister showed up and instead of giving Ingrid a chance to explain, decided her powers had just gone crazy and the only solution was to put her in the urn because she was an uncontrollable danger to everyone.

"As such, Ingrid spent something like thirty years trapped inside that urn, and when the Duke and his younger minion who was dating her niece Anna - slightly less douchy since he wasn't into raping his marks - let her out to try, once again, to take over Arendelle by making everyone think her other niece Elsa was just as crazy and dangerous, Ingrid was now actually crazy and dangerous.

"It's pretty tragic, actually," Emma grimaced. "She was a kindhearted young woman who was trying to use her powers to protect her family and ended up turned into a homicidal lunatic by her family's misguided attempt to protect everyone form her. Her remaining sister actually went so far as to use the stones to make everyone, including their parents, forget that Ingrid had ever existed... which had to be the final insult when she finally got free."

Shrugging, Emma continued, "Anyway, she froze Arendelle over and traded something Anna stole from Rumplestiltskin that she'd recovered from Belle... assuming that all actually happened that way... maybe it didn't."

She glanced at Hook who was yet unaware of the alternate timeline and amended, "What with the whole memory stones thing. Either way, he gave her that bullshit prophesy that Neal found in her truck along with stuff."

"Your stuff?" repeated Snow.

"She was my foster mother for about a year, back in Minnesota," said Emma to her gobsmacked parents. "And don't ask me how I got from Boston to a shitty little town in Minnesota. Point is, she seemed really nice until she pushed me in front of a speeding car to try and trigger my magic. It didn't. I ran away. Then I got to Storybrooke and when I found her here she used a stone to take my memory. She did the same before that with Regina so she'd think she was just another Enchanted Forest dweller who'd always been here."

"All right, I think I get it, weird as that all is," said Hook, and narrowed his eyes, "but if her nieces are frozen in Arendelle, how is she going to summon her dead sisters' spirits into their bodies if we're all here? How does an ice wall help her? Is she just angry that Swan here didn't go with all of us to the Enchanted Forest so she could do it then and has just lost her marbles completely?"

"I'm not really sure," admitted Emma. "From what I understand, Ingrid trapped Elsa in the urn which Rumplestiltskin locked up in a vault of things that didn't come to this world. She's beyond Ingrid's reach. But...," she recalled, "he _does_ have a necklace that belonged to Anna that can work as a one-way portal to bring its owner here. Maybe she thinks she can use it to bring both sisters, then just off Anna."

"I'd better talk to my father," said Neal. "Make sure she can't-"

Of course, right then, the ground shook and there was a loud smashing sound.

"Damn it!" Emma growled, "not the stupid snow gollum!"

"Snow what?" said David.

He didn't need anyone to answer, though, as something big and very cold blocked out the moonlight from the windows in front of the shop and the blue glow of the back-up generator illuminated the bloodthirsty gaze of an abominable snowman.

The snow gollum bellowed, shattering the windows and reached in, sweeping its giant hands.

"Nooooooo! My iced rum!" cried Hook.

"Run!" cried Snow, just before she was knocked unconscious for the 1,485th time.

Neal grabbed her while Emma threw David her gun, which he fired at the monster while Emma tried to conjure a barrier spell that finally gave them a head start running after Hook out the back.

"You run pretty fast for a guy who was just complaining yesterday about being ass-raped!" Neal shouted.

"I'd rather have a soar bum than be squashed by a snow monster, mate!"

"I am _not_ your mate!"

They ran into the street, nearly getting run down by Regina's Mercedes. The former Mayor got out, scowling at them. "Why did no one inform me that there was a power outage due to an ice wall around-"

"ROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

Regina sighed. "Which one of you is responsible for the town destroying monstrosity this time!?"

Everyone pointed at Neal.

"Oh, come on! I was just following Emma's orders!"

"Which you screwed up!"

"Then you should have broken into that truck yourself!"

"ROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

The snow gollum lumbered around the corner. Regina glared at it and conjured a massive fireball.

"ROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

It began to melt, not completely, but enough that it was disoriented and Regina could throw more fireballs at it.

Emma added in her own magic and the creature melted down to rather cute little snowman with a carrot nose.

"Oh, thank you! You saved m-"

"KILL IT KILL IT!" Hook shouted and smashed the small snowman creature with a trash can.

"What the hell, man!?" Neal exclaimed.

"Talking snowmen are unnatural!"

"For once I agree with Guyliner," said Regina, her tone belying disgust at ever doing so. "So, what is this all about?"

* * *

AN: Neal and Hook turn into such babies around each other, don't they? Hook is jealous even though Emma has made it clear she hates his guts. Neal is jealous even though he's made it clear he wants nowhere near Emma's pants. Men are such idiots, am I right? Yeah, I killed Olaf, that creepy little freak of nature!

Next up: Wardrobe trip!


	34. The Pirate, The Bitch, and The Wardrobe

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER NINETEEN**

 **THE PIRATE, THE BITCH, AND THE WARDROBE**

The Apprentice's home smelled musty from years of being uninhabited, the man apparently trapped here by the Dark Curse as some of Rumplestiltskin's revenge... though why he hadn't gone back and tidied the place during that year in the Enchanted Forest, who could say? Maybe he'd decided he was done with this magical nonsense.

Of course, Emma could have tracked him down using one of his many personal possessions and magic, but Gold had the potion required and she didn't trust "Micky Mouse" any more than she had Isaac, so she'd just assume leave the old creep to the current Dark One to do with as he chose, and whether or not that damned Gold to death... well... it was his free will.

After the snow monster was discovered, not surprisingly, as a cover for Ingrid stealing Anna's necklace, they'd had to come up with a quick, somewhat half-assed plan to recover Elsa and gaurd the wardrobe against Ingrid using it before she decided, success or failure, to cast her Shattered Sight spell and cause the residents of Storybrooke to murder each other until she was the only one left... after which she would, probably try to use the wardrobe or some other means to get back to the Enchanted Forest.

The plan was to try killing two birds - or villains - with one field trip... to entirely fuck up metaphors. They'd get Excalibur and the Promethian Flame, which would work just as well as the Apprentice's dildo wand at freeing Rumplestiltskin _and_ Merlin from the influence of the sword's pieces when the two were fused.

That would _also_ free Merlin from the tree and allow him to help take down Fake Arthur by freeing everyone of the Avalon Dust fangirl magic and revealing him for who he really was... which might also require removing a charm like the one Zelena and Robin had used, but which hopefully was not up his butt.

Then everyone would be free and they could rain magical Agent Orange down upon those unnatural rose-chive hybrid "Middlemist" flowers created with Devil magic that carried it in their pollen, an insidious means to amplify attractions and twist them into feelings of "true love"... which made Emma really regret rolling around in a field of them with Hook and _then_ routinely huffing that one she'd magically kept alive for the next several decades.

She didn't even _like_ the color pink!

(And _then_ they could retrieve Elsa's urn and find Anna and Kristoff, who'd by then be seeking out Blackbeard, and they could put at least the lesser problem of petty family squabbling behind them before tackling the destruction of the Dark One... and moving on to more petty family squabbling.)

It was becoming quite clear to Emma that Metatron was either fucking with her or not being entirely honest about how involved or not in all of this Satan was. Maybe it was just his minions being proactive and doing evil shit to get promotions in Hell or something, but it sure sounded shady, like part of some greater battle between Heaven and Hell, using fairy tale people as pawns in an old grudge over the whole exile thing that lead to her family being pawns in the counterattack.

Divine being sucked!

Emma was really beginning to miss being an atheist. She'd give Hook's left nut just to be an agnostic again! Unfortunately, God probably didn't want it any more than she did.

"Stop scratching your balls!" Emma hissed at the pirate who'd paused in double-checking his supplies of weapons, rum, and leather to readjust himself with his hook in a rather inappropriate fashion _again_.

"I can't help it. I only have one pair of britches suitable for this world and I didn't have time to get them cleaned by Storybrooke's Asian residents."

"Dude, that's so racist!" Neal groaned, walking into the room with his own rucksack.

"It is not! The only establishment in town for the cleaning of unwashable garments is run by what this world calls 'Asian' people. And even our people don't bother with 'Shangri-la-ians' because that sounds dumb. Well, aside from their pirates, anyway. If we come across Captain Shang, don't call him 'Magical Chinese' or he will magical Chinese water torture you."

"Ugh, your world is so racist," sighed Emma.

"It's _your_ world too, luv," pointed out Hook.

"Please, just our world?" Regina prompted as she escorted a sour-faced Henry who was pissed off at being forbidden to go. "Did you watch the Academy Awards? It was whiter than a Republican primary."

"Touché."

"What's a Republic primary?" asked Hook.

Belle, who twirled in like she was at a ball responded in her know-it-all tone, "You know how in ancient times the Athenians all voted themselves on the laws of their kingdom to maintain a utopia of peace and tranquility... and then the gods got offended at all of the freethinking, sunk their capital and brainwashed everyone into believing in hereditary monarchies based on fear-mongering, xenophobia, war waging, weapon proliferation, subjugating women through laws on chastity and virtue, and monetary greed? It's like both of those."

"That seems mutually exclusive."

"Yeah, you'd think," said Neal and raised a brow at his stepmother. "Why are you wearing that yellow ballgown? You'd better not be planning to slow dance and have sex up in here again. What if we walk back through that wardrobe while you two are going at it? I never walked in on my parents having sex because they weren't having any, and I'd like to avoid any parental sex-related trauma."

"Yeah, you definitely want to avoid that," Emma agreed with a glance at her parents who flushed.

"You walked in on your parents?" Neal sputtered, bemused.

"It can't have been that traumatizing," shrugged Hook. "I'd imagine their lovemaking is as shocking as watching paint dry."

"HEY!" The Charmings both exclaimed, offended.

"I did mention that they have little flowers on their sheets did I not?" he continued.

Regina sniggered, "I'm surprised that being so neutered, David was able to procreate at all."

"Burn!" Hook beamed and held up his only hand in expectation of a co-burn high-five, but Regina gave him a disgusted look.

He in turn gave Henry a disgusted look and hissed, "You told me that was a thing!"

"Oh, I'm sure it is," sassed Regina, "but I don't want to catch whatever strain of syphilis rotted your brain and turned you into an incestuous alcoholic slut."

"Speaking of," Emma changed the subject and frowned at Hook, "why you are even coming? I'm not going to give in to your 'charms', Hook."

"To get my _first_ love back, obviously," Hook replied in a huff while affixing a cutlass to his belt. "You may have chosen Nealfire over me-"

"I haven't chosen anyone over anyone," Emma cut him off, "and even if I had, he hasn't chosen me."

"Really?" sputtered the pirate, befuddled. "Why ever not? I thought he wanted to win you back, or seemed to when last we had a heart-to-heart prior to his funeral."

"If that's what you want to call setting me up to scare Emma away with a load of bullshit, sure," muttered Neal.

Emma sighed and responded, "Because I'm an asshole. Can we just go already?"

"I bet," Regina interjected again, "he's really going to get that hair tonic. We all know Hook's real first love is _himself_."

"It's for my ship!" Hook snapped.

"Sure, Captain Rogain."

Hook glared at the other man shouldering a pack of supplies and now dressed in fairy tale land clothes that were far more appealing on him than his hobo clothes, which he was sure Emma would notice and worked to offset, somewhat, Neal's otherwise inferior physical appearance - along with the shorter man having inherited the Crocodile's hair, which was problematic, because he had to consider Rumplestiltskin's hair as one of the reasons Belle had fallen for him, as he had no other good attributes. Women did love being able to run their fingers through a man's hair after lovemaking.

"Damn you, Nealfire!" Hook growled.

"Stop calling me that, Butt Pirate!" Neal shot back.

"Both of you _shut up_ or I'm taking Regina instead!" Emma hissed.

Hook's glared turned to a grin. "I did always suspect Swan was a bit gay for- _owe!_ " he howled as Emma smacked him upside the head.

"The only person I have ever been 'gay for' is Lily, and that's not any of your business."

"It is now that you brought it up. Who is this Lily lass and what exactly did you two fine ladies- _bloody hell!_ " Hook hissed as Neal hit the other side of his head. "All the hair tonic in the forest and ships in the sea aren't worth this abuse!"

"Then stay here," Neal stated.

"Okay, fine," grumbled Hook, checking his head in the nearest mirror for further evidence of thinning since Whale cut him off due to the vomiting incident, "they're worth the abuse."

After Neal had done, Emma hugged their moody son and instructed, "Be good. Stay in school. Don't steal anything or kiss any girls. Pretty much anything Hook taught you, don't do it."

"Fine," Henry grumbled.

"And don't drop my brother down any wells," Emma instructed her parents.

"Oh, very funny," Snow harumphed before giving her daughter a hug.

"And seriously, name the kid already!" Emma amended.

Rumplestiltskin grumblingly spoke up, "Well, get on with it before that creepy old wanker shows up and curses us all for trespassing!"

"Don't die!" Tinkerbell called after them as the door shut and glowed, earning an annoyed look from everyone.

"Who invited you, anyway?" Regina complained.

"I figured since you and Robin are on the outs there was an available bon voyage spot."

"I'm beginning to see why the Blue Fairy tricked you into exile."

Everyone began filing out of the room as they broke into various overlapping arguments, appropriately forgetting about Henry instantly and leaving him alone in the room.

"Dude, my family are such idiots!" he snorted and opened the wardrobe's door, stepping confidently through-

And when the bright flash faded, found himself in the cell at Storybrooke's Sheriff Station with a box of Pop Tarts and note on the cot written in Emma's handwriting: _You are so grounded, young man!_

Henry sunk down onto the cot and pouted, "Oh, farts."

* * *

AN: "I'm an asshole" is from _Jessica Jones_ who knows she's no hero. Poor Henry is in the slammer again. I can't help it. I just haven't liked his character since... I don't know... ever? He was okay in Season 1, but around 2B when he became a villain apologist and went from holding Regina accountable to defended her against any legitimate criticism with the "she's my mommy and she tried to clean up her own mess" defense made me kind of hate his little punk ass.

Next up: The Disenchanted Forest.


	35. Disenchanted

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY**

 **DISENCHANTED  
**

The Wardrobe had taken them just beyond the border of Camelot. Hopefully, if they took the route that Emma vaguely remembered, they could find the Prometian Flame without running into Princess Fire Crotch on her magical methadone quest... which, really, they shouldn't, since the mouthy little quasi Scotswoman who had more embarrassingly distracting hair than Snow White and Hook combined wouldn't reach this kingdom for another six to nine weeks.

None of them wanted to deal with adding any local malcontents to their group, particularly since Merida, last time around, got kidnaped and dosed by "Arthur" into blabbing why they were all in Camelot. Sadly, strong women in this world seemed to fall under only two categories: shifty murderous psychopaths with sparkly bling who kidnapped and tortured people and brawling loudmouthed idiots in burlap and leather who got kidnapped and tortured.

Emma supposed that she was one of the few who'd straddled that divide... and in doing so had kind of sucked at both stereotypes.

Though she had done okay with the fashions... even if the Enchanted Forest garb was never her thing and she never got used to how uncomfortable it was even using magic to try and make it less torturous.

If they were lucky, they wouldn't have to attend any Camelot balls, though at least, Emma supposed, she wouldn't have to deal with Regina turning into a giant doofus over somehow never being forced into dancing lessons by her ball-crashing mother... which just seemed completely absurd and _had_ to be revisionist history related, because that made _zero_ sense!

About as much sense as those stupid willow-wasp or whatever the hell they were called things that were buzzing unhappily in the bag Neal as carrying - protection against Farquaad's dark magic if he did jump out of the undergrowth and try to mind-whammy them.

"How exactly do those things neutralize dark magic?" Hook asked, poking at the bag.

"Hell if I know," shrugged Emma. "Must be some kind of super light magic booster. If Artie tries to attack us with dark magic, we can throw them at him."

"Then what?"

"My guess would be run away," answered Neal, adjusting his cape against the growing chill of the evening. "We should probably make camp soon. It's getting dark."

There was still some snow on the ground yet, several months earlier than in the previous timeline's journey here. And no doubt there were Camelot scouts lurking even after dark.

"We're almost at the spot with the Flame," Emma discerned as she looked around. "How about you two make camp here? It's just up ahead. I don't know how long it'll take me, but I'd rather not wait until morning and risk being found before I can get it."

"You're sure you can get this ancient fire thing?" Hook prompted. "I wouldn't trust whatever the Crocodile said."

"I have an independent source of information," said Emma, though she had to admit being uneasy since it had turned out Merlin was being manipulated by his former presumed protégé the whole time since being the one who activated the "Holy Grail" and forged it into its current weaponized form had bound him to it and made him dark magic's bitch after the Dark One was created from it... or, at least, that was how Emma figured it.

"Be careful," Neal prompted, laying a hand on her arm and adding so Hook couldn't hear, "You don't know what you'll face this time."

"It can't be worse than what I faced in Purgatory," Emma responded, handing him her pack and then heading off into the dusky forest.

With a sigh, Neal began gathering broken branches from the area to start a fire. Being left alone to baby-sit Hook was not how he'd be planning his day when it started at Granny's.

Of course, there were a lot of things he'd never planned in his life that just seemed to be the universe laughing at him.

Like being sent back to the land of the living to play sidekick to the woman who'd broken his heart into a million pieces in life and then proceeded to stomp all over those pieces after he'd died.

It was hard being in love with someone you knew didn't feel the same. Neal had never stopped being in love with Emma, all those years between Portland and Manhattan, but it had been clear to him that she'd not felt the same, that whatever feelings she might still have had were tainted and twisted by anger, betrayal, and hate... while she'd even then been warming to Hook, sending him flirty looks, smiles, and the deep sort of gazes they'd once shared.

Neal hadn't stopped loving her, though.

It had hurt, but Neal had decided long ago that he owned that love, and Emma hadn't the right to take it away, even as she'd let him die twice without any mourning, had left him in death while sacrificing every promise she'd made to save another not remotely deserving of such devotion or forgiveness.

 _You are what you love, not what loves you._

And maybe that was pathetic, but it's who Neal had always been, no matter what name he'd gone by.

Of course, by that logic, Emma was what _she_ loved, and that was a whole lot of messed up shit -

Just like the pirate who seemed to think he could just slink off into the woods.

" _Where_ are you going?"

"To take a piss. What's it to you?"

"In the direction Emma went?" Neal countered. "You are _not_ going after her to provide pointless and self-defeating back-up again! She doesn't _need_ your egocentric heroics."

"She could get ambushed!"

"She has magic and she'd end up having to use it to save _your_ stupid ass. _Sit down_!"

Hook glared but obeyed, muttering something offensive.

Neal sighed and used his lighter to ignite the fire before taking a seat across from the grouchy and infatuated pirate who still seemed convinced he could win Emma over... or back... or something.

Ugh. He _really_ didn't need this. He didn't need Emo Hook _and_ Emo Emma making him crazy!

Emma had said she was in love with him now, had always been and just repressed it or whatever, but Neal looked at her and saw a desperate and confused woman who was just as afraid of being alone and prone to guilt-tripping over other people's assholery as she'd ever been - and prone to fixating on the people whose guilt she was assuming.

Purgatory had run her through the ringer, and made him the focal point of her self-recrimination.

His own experience... well... it was a lot of purging of childhood shit with his dad, the streets of London, Neverland, and New York. And, of course, his guilt at trusting August and leaving Emma - which added up to never knowing his son.

And now he was here, in _Camelot_ , a fairy tale disaster, the aftermath of Merlin _creating_ the Dark Curse to move kingdoms between worlds 1,500 years ago (Land Without Magic time) and rid himself of immortality an the thrall of the "Holy Grail".

Seemed everything that went to shit all traced back to that guy getting thirsty in the desert. Camelot was just the most obvious direct connection to that metaphorical Garden of Eden apple-eating mashed up with some weird Old Testament slavery shit and Satan testing Jesus in the desert.

Basically, both God and Lucifer had a one-track senses of humor when it came to fucking with each other's creations.

At least, that's how it seemed to Neal who'd been given certain insight that others did not have.

But it was only _certain_ insight. He didn't know what would become of Storybrooke or the people there if Emma succeeded - if they would return here or if Storybrooke would become _real_.

Nor did he know his own fate.

Neal didn't know if he had been given a permanent second chance, a chance to grow old, _to watch his son grow up_ , or if his time on mortal ground would be up when Emma completed her divine mission.

Not to mention Emma's fate.

That uncertainty was rather aggravating, to be honest. Not that Neal wasn't happy for any chance to see the people he loved, but if it was going to be another brief glimpse of what could have been before being whisked away...

Neal sighed.

Like Emma, he hadn't worked through _all_ of his issues. He was still angry and embittered that his story - where he wasn't just a plot device in his father's origin tale - had been removed from the Book by Isaac _and not put back in by Pinocchio_. It was nothing short of infuriating to have his life just be erased, all of his contributions, his struggles, his hopes and dreams - and failures - edited out, because he _didn't fit a certain narrative_.

Neal had shared many a drink and session of grouching on that subject with Rufus, the Thirteenth Apostle.

And the _real_ Arthur too. That poor bastard! Groomed by Merlin to take over Camelot only to have Merlin turned into a tree by his ex-girlfriend which stuck them all in some sort of temporal limbo loop, but not before a nutjob prince from another land who'd infiltrated the Knights of the Round Table killed him... and then set about impersonating him, married his girlfriend, treated her like crap, abused his best friend, made them both loath him, then made Guinevere fake love him so he could rape her every night without her complaining and throw balls in honor of himself every Saturday.

If things had gone differently, if Merlin had never meddled, maybe Arthur and Guinevere could have lived happily ever after.

Or maybe they couldn't have, Neal considered grimly as he gazed into the fire.

Destiny was a bitch, and certain souls were connected in certain ways that no amount of free will and different events could alter completely.

Which boiled down to Neal knowing he'd been _meant_ to die. Maybe his death _could_ have been avoided if he'd gone to the front lines, which was the irony of it all. Maybe by following that path and looking boldly away when Death came for him he'd have avoided meeting an early end, but instead his father had taken the coward's way out and altered his path, made him a man running from death. He'd looked away in the Never Sea, and again when he fell through that portal, desperately hoped it wasn't too late or that he'd somehow made up for avoiding the path fate had meant to determine if he lived or died... but Death had come for him all the same and he'd finally accepted it, tired of the running, tired of the anger that it wasn't even his fault he'd been pulled from that battlefield and set upon a path not meant for him.

God had put him on _this_ path, but it might just be a brief detour, a chance to play prophet, to set Emma on a better path toward her own destiny than she'd taken before - and then end up once more with his head on a platter.

It would have been nice, though, just to have a delusion of a happy ending.

Being the guy who never got the girl sucked.

Being the guy who only wanted to help people and ended up vilified by the villains really sucked.

And speaking of...

"How much of that have you had to drink?" Neal hissed at Hook who had to have some kind of bottomless charm on his flask the way he'd been guzzling it the past hour while they sat waiting.

"What's it to you?" the pirate hissed back.

"I'd rather you weren't drunk if we get ambushed by the Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament posse!"

"I need something to take the morning edge off, so unless you have a pot of coffee handy, _mate_."

"Morning was twelve hours ago!"

"In Storybrooke. This bloody twelve hour portal lag is hard to acclimate to!"

"You've spent 300 years going to and from Neverland!"

"Yes, well, I happen to function better with a little rum in my system. Don't worry. I have catlike reflexes!"

The undergrowth rustled and Neal jumped up, his old cutlass drawn... while Hook tripped over the bottom of his coat and dropped his flask.

"Yeah, you're a real drunken boxing master," scoffed Neal as Emma returned looking rather pale.

"Did you get it?" he asked.

"Yeah, I got it," Emma answered, and cut off his next question, "I don't want to talk about it."

"Lovely," Hook declared, brushing leaves from his coat. "Now, hand over those wonderful puffed sugar things Belle packed. If I can't have coffee, at least I can dethrone this impostor king and steal his enchanted challis-turned-broken-phallus so I can get my ship back on a sugar high."

* * *

AN: "I don't want to talk about it" is code for "lazy writer who doesn't want to come up with a scene right now". Here's the dialogue from _Adaptatio_ n:

Charlie Kaufman: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.

Donald Kaufman: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.

Charlie Kaufman: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.

Donald Kaufman: I remember that.

Charlie Kaufman: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at *me*. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.

Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.

Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?

Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.

Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.

Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

Next up: Camelot.


	36. Secrets & Lies

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: A slight edit was made to Chapter 35. Not overly important, but required to prevent later retcon.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE**

 **SECRETS & LIES**

Using magic to contain one of glowy sprite things, Emma moved her hand toward Hook's chest. The creature fought her efforts, but she was ultimately stronger.

Hook raised a brow as the ash glowed and melted into his skin.

"Trying to light my fire, Swan?"

She rolled her eyes. "Trying to protect you from being mind-whammied by Arthur into betraying us. We can't exactly walk into Camelot with a bag of anti-dark magic creatures without it raising suspicions," she told him before repeating the procedure with Neal, to which the sprite was far more agreeable.

"What about the flame?" Hook asked. "Walking into Camelot with an ancient anti-dark magic relic is hardly _not_ suspicious, Swan. Won't the sword sense it's magical nemesis?"

"Maybe," sighed Emma.

She'd thought of that. Excalibur was, essentially in whatever form it took, the darkest of magic and despair cursed onto (fairy tale) man by Satan. The flame that Promethius stole from the gods was a counter to that, a spark of the lightest of magic and hope created by God. The two would cancel each other out - or so that was the original story Emma was given.

So, yeah, maybe Excalibur, even incomplete, would sense the Flame and somehow alert whoever was wielding it that an enemy was in their midst. They'd have to deal with that when they crossed that drawbridge.

"We have to be prepared for anything," Neal interjected. "Camelot doesn't work magically like any other place in this world."

"Why not?" asked the pirate.

"Because of how it was recreated. It's like Storybrooke. A kingdom that essentially didn't exist until it was formed in the Land Without Magic. Merlin wanted to rid himself of the Grail and the power that came with it, which he saw as a curse. Turned out having a magical kingdom in a world incompatible with magic and full of greedy and superstitious people who coveted magic didn't work out so well, though, so they returned to this world. But a kingdom once destroyed can never again come into being as it was. It was altered. Magic was altered.

"Snow White," Neal continued, "never should have been able to split her heart to outwit the price of a curse. She didn't entirely _outwit it_ , but she did manage to split her heart _and_ somehow have her and David survive in Storybrooke with half a heart each.

"And even though Camelot only underwent the one reversal," he added, "it's older, created using the _full_ strength of the Dark Curse directly siphoned from the Grail rather than the leftovers that my father used to transform our part of the Enchanted Forest into Storybrooke. Therefore, it's older, darker, and magic is more potent _and_ more unpredictable. Also, time slowed down to something like Neverland after Merlin was turned into a tree. Whatever people think is like five years is more like five hundred. They're actually older than us."

"What we need is to find Lancelot," said Emma. "Somehow, he escaped Camelot's wards that, like Storybrooke, should keep anyone from leaving. But he went back for some reason before the Dark Curse was cast, maybe because he'd heard rumors that it was connected to Excalibur and thought he could steal it from 'Arthur' and save everyone."

"Or the other kingdoms in the Enchanted Forest just hate black people more," offered Hook with a shrug. "I mean, at least these people in their delusions of loving their tyrant king idolize Merlin as their savior."

"They think he's an old white guy with a beard," said Neal.

"Don't worry, as a sleazy white man who considers women a place to store his dick," amended Emma, "you'll be welcomed like a visiting king."

"Maybe this Farquaad isn't so bad then," the pirate considered, earning a disgusted look from his companions.

"He murdered a good man, brainwashed his wife, subjugated an entire kingdom, and plans to unleash the Underworld upon the Enchanted Forest using the souls of those who try to stop him in exchange for opening the portal."

"So, what you're saying is, if I _join_ him..."

"I already marked you with anti-dark mojo," Emma pointed out. "Besides, he regularly murders his devoted followers that he uses as pawns to achieve and maintain his power. You'll be one more idiot with a jousting lace through your head."

Hook glowered. " _Bugger_. Being one of the good guys is not remotely rewarding without a sexual conquest!"

"Well," Neal shrugged, "there's always the possibility that if he's separated from the influence of Excalibur he'll be content with just keeping his kingdom of brainwashed people and not try to open a portal to the Underworld to let all the exiled lesser divine beings run amuck."

"Too bad Merlin didn't relay any of this last time around, before he got murdered," Emma sighed under her breath.

"Well, he was under Arthur's control," Neal reminded. "And if we're going down that route, it's too bad you instantly forgave his murderer and then covered up the crime to hide your complicitness in creating another Dark One."

"Wait... what?" Hook demanded, coming to a halt and then gave them an annoyed look.

"Nothing," said Emma. "Figure of speech."

"That is _not_ a 'figure of speech'. Enough of these riddles you two have been snarking since Nealfire fell out of the sky! If I am going to risk my life to get this cup-sword, then I deserve to know what is going on? What do you mean about creating another Dark One?"

Emma threw Neal a furious look, then sighed and told Hook, "I didn't stop the time portal _the first time_ , okay? There was another timeline for awhile before I fixed what I messed which had led to me becoming the Dark One and also turning you into the Dark One after which you murdered Merlin and I took everyone's memories including yours so I could try to fix everything without anyone knowing what I'd done, but you found out and tried to open a portal to the Underworld to bring dead Dark Ones back to life in exchange for the souls of my family. Then at the last moment you pulled a Regina and decided to try and clean up your mess, which meant I had to kill you. I stabbed you with the reforged sword, you died, and then, in my stupidest move yet, I dragged my whole family to the Underworld anyway to find you and split my heart so I could bring you back to life... which seemed like a good idea at the time but defied so many laws of magic, morality, integrity, and common sense that the universe imploded, but not before I died and was given the chance to go back and reset the original timeline that went to literal almost Hell because we fell through that time portal which caused me to lose my soul, destroyed that universe and replaced it with a new defective one that I then, as I said, fucked up even more by trading every ounce of dignity I had to debase myself to be your Milah replacement.

"I turned my back on my family, on my son, on justice and everything that's right," Emma told him coolly, "because of you. I traded my independence, my individuality, bound my life and death to you, even though I barely knew you, even though all you ever did was manipulate me, lie to me, insult me, and make me feel guilty for all the bad things you did.

"You're like a disease that infected me, Hook," Emma said and scoffed. "Actually, you _did_ give me syphilis, a virulent strain that took divine intervention to cure, so _thanks_ for that. I hope it rots your brain and your dick falls off!"

On that exclamation, Emma stomped off ahead of them, furious at pretty much everything.

Hook watched her go, processing everything, then concluded, "So, I _did_ bed Emma then!"

Neal snorted. "Yeah, you did. You married and bedded _your great granddaughter_ , you sick pervert."

"My... what?"

"Queen Eva was your daughter. You raped her barmaid mother, she gave the kid to my father who facilitated two nobles in her secret adoption, she grew into a beautiful but cruel blue-eyed, black-haired little bitch princess who publicly destroyed Cora's virtue and let the woman's rapist go free so she could marry Leopold with whom she had Snow White who subsequently gave birth to Emma - which makes her your great granddaughter, and thus your sexual infatuation with her and previous reciprocation of that _extremely disgusting_."

Hook started at Neal for a good minute, then bellowed an angry, "SWAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!" and stalked after her, lashing ferns with his hook as he went.

* * *

"Why in the seven hells did you not tell me you were my kin!?" Hook demanded after catching up with the angry princess.

"Because I don't want to be related to you!" Emma snarled. "You're vile and disgusting and even if we weren't, I'm ashamed and disgusted with myself that I ever had any feelings other than grudging gratitude for lending me your ship to save Henry and getting me that memory potion! The only thing worse than knowing I actually let you inside of me is knowing I have your nasty little genes inside me!"

She shoved him as she spoke, slamming Hook back into a tree and drew a knife, holding it to his throat as she had done when they first met.

"Woa, E-"

" _Every_ horrible aspect of my personality," Emma snapped, pressing the blade against his scruff, "every vice I've been fighting against since the day I was born is because of you! You're the reason that both my mother and grandmother were snotty little brats who grew up to think they were saints while simultaneously destroying lives with their narcissism!" she shouted. "You're the reason I ended up caring more about getting laid than spending time with my son because you're completely incapable of empathy, _and sometimes I think the only reason I ever was came from the fucking spell my parents had done to give me an extra helping of goodness!"_

Emma dropped the knife, choked back a sob, and purple poofed away. Neal had reached them in time to hear most of her rant and picked up the knife as Hook rubbed at the bleeding cut on his throat.

"Good thing she hadn't found Excalibur yet," snorted Neal and at Hook's bewildered look explained, "A paper cut from that thing will kill you."

"Fantastic," grumbled Hook. "We're stuck on a suicide mission with an emotionally unstable sorceress!"

"She definitely gets the unstable from you."

"Shut up! This is a bloody nightmare! I'm in love with my own great granddaughter who abandoned us in a forest full of mind-controled murderers!"

Neal glared at him. "You really are an asshole, you know that?"

"Well, as you said, it's heredity, so I am going to blame my father."

"That you murdered. Did he murder _his_ father?"

"I never met my grandfather, so I suppose it's a possibility."

"Yeah, that's what your family does. Murder people and pass off blame onto previous generations."

"That's why you're no longer into Swan then," Hook deduced. "You're just as disgusted as she is to be related to me, the man who took your mother. How tragic for you. Falling in love with the descendant of someone you so revile. That's even worse than my plight, mate."

"Like you actually can comprehend love, you geneticly defective slut," Neal scoffed. "Not sure Emma can either thanks to your genetic contribution and her shitty upbringing. I'd like to hope she has enough of David's mother in her to counteract your psycopathy, but she didn't exactly fight it last time around when she still had a soul."

"That's rather harsh, mate."

"It's honest, which is more than you've ever been with her," Neal accused. "I love Emma. I'll always love her. But it's hard to stay in love with someone who just keeps on hurting you. And that's what we ended up being to each other, because of assholes like you. I hurt her even though I didn't want to, and because of that, all that good she had was overshadowed by the darkness, or by that void her parents left in her that she filled by associating with pricks like you, and because of that she became the worse version of herself, someone who hurt me back because she _did_ want me to suffer as she had."

Neal shook his head. "I can forgive a lot. I forgave my old man. But no matter how many times I tell myself that Emma lost her soul, that she was a conscienceless version of herself trapped in a messed up universe, that even before that she had lost important memories thanks to Ingrid and had other fake memories messing with her own thanks to Regina, and the whole stupid spell thing her parents did... I can't escape that she countered my genuine remorse with apathy.

"I died, and she didn't care while she went to the Underworld for you after you dated for like a fucking month," Neal sighed. "Before that, she even wished me dead to spare herself the inconvenience of having to feel anything but relief that I wasn't there to complicate her emotionally stunted life. She wanted to choose the psychopath side of her family tree, because it was easier to just twist lust into love, and she had the magical power to make that good enough to fool fate."

Neal shook his head and conceded, "You're right about one thing. That's not someone who's stable. That's not someone I want to split my heart for or be called their soulmate."

With a sigh, he concluded, "You are what you love, not what loves you. And I don't want to be that."

Hook rolled his eyes and responded, "Yeah, well, considering she's my kin, it doesn't seem' fate' gives any of us much of a choice in that, does it? You don't choose who you love, even if it goes against the laws of gods and nature."

"But you can choose not to act on it," Neal countered, "and that's what sets the heroes apart from the villains."

"Then being a hero is overrated, just as I always thought," scoffed Hook.

Suddenly there was a rustling in the undergrowth and Hook let out a sigh. "Look, Swa-ah, bugger!"

Because it wasn't Emma. It was a mob of men in rather cheap looking red and blue tunics with swords and a brainwashed agenda.

Neal sighed and raised his hands while muttering, "Oh, farts."

* * *

AN: Yeah, I know, Neal and Hook having a conversation about Emma and romance is even worse than Hook and Belle discussing loving Rumple. It's seven ways from Sunday wrong.

Next up: The Charmings finally settle on a name. What will it be? Prince Humperdink? Prince Valiant? The Artist Formerly Known as Prince? Does 'Blue Ivy' work for a boy? And unrelated, if Zelena hadn't died and still raped Robin and had his baby but gave it her 'surname' would she have named it 'North West' to commemorate killing the Good Witch of the North? And if it was then named 'North West Hood' would it sound like the whitest suburb ever where 50's Fuck Date Emma and Hook would have lived in whatever temporally differed throwback alternate reality that night occurred in? *Discuss*


	37. The Power of Names

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO**

 **THE POWER OF NAMES... IS PSYCHOLOGICAL, NOT MAGICAL, YOU IDIOT!**

"Okay, that's it," Belle said when the couple walked in the front door, "you are naming your child today, otherwise, I am going on strike. And Granny has already refused on the grounds that she has to start over with embroidering her blanket, which means no one else in this town has the time or the disregard for personal safety to baby-sit your son."

Snow exchanged a guilty look with David and explained, "We just haven't found the right one yet. We'd settled on 'Neal'..."

"No one's buying that anymore, guys," Belle told them. "And if you didn't know before that was creepy and wrong-"

"That's not fair," argued Snow. "And we have tried to come up with a good name. We both like 'Lance', but apparently our friend Lancelot isn't actually dead, and it's considered unlucky to namesake a living acquaintance, and, well, there is a law in our kingdom about... you know... naming a royal heir after... well..."

"A not white as snow person?" groaned Belle. "You're the Queen. Change the law. Or don't. Maybe you should put someone else in charge of naming your son. Also, I am available for the position of god mother since Ruby has basically told you both to go to Hell. You owe me as much for forcing me to remain in a closed space with the man who had assaulted and shot me 'for my own good'."

"That was all Snow's idea," David defended.

"And for leaving me and Neal to rely on Regina for supplies to look for a way to get Rumple back so Neal could get back to Emma and Henry, which he only did by dying, and as a result, Emma apparently pledged her devotion to his skeazy step father, so now he has zero respect for your daughter who is miserable and spends her lunch hours moping in my library mutilating all of my copies of _The Princess Bride_."

"All right, all right," sighed Snow, "we'll pick something. By tomorrow."

"Good."

Belle pulled her coat from the rack by the door and strode primly out of the Loft, leaving the couple exchanging a worried look.

* * *

It was with a great deal of anxiety that the people of Storybrooke gathered in the Town Hall after a radio and TV broadcast alerted them to an emergency meeting called by their new mayor.

And so it was with something less like anxiety and more like extreme aggravation that they soon were informed by Mayor Blanchard-Nolan that they had been summoned _to help name her son_.

Yes, the bubbly new mayor stood in front of the assembled chairs with a Bingo basket telling everyone that since Neal Cassidy was back amongst the living and it would be confusing and awkward for the family now, they were going to rename their newborn son, but in the interest of being good leaders, Snow White and Prince Charming wanted "the people" to name their future leader.

It was further instructed that a charm had been placed on the Bingo basket to prevent any malicious suggestions, so there went anyone considering "I. P. Freely" or "Jesus F. Christ".

In contrast to what the majority of monarchs think, their people don't actually like them, and even if they do find them tolerable, they don't actually give a shit about their personal lives. At least, this was the case in The Enchanted Forest.

Who they paid their taxes to was really not relevant, so long as they weren't being massacred or starved... and so things hadn't been bad until Snow White had started rallying support against the Evil Queen and then spilled that over into King George's land.

The truth was, "the people" didn't actually like Snow White and Prince Charming anymore. All of the promises they'd made during that war had been broken. Their families were not safer, their farms were not more prosperous, they were not able to strive toward any occupation their heart desired. Not at all. Their families were threatened roughly ever one to three months by a magical apocalypse which usually killed about a dozen people whose funerals those two selfish jerks never attended. They no longer had farms, but were rather stuck in the same dead-end jobs they'd had under the Curse, because no matter what inspirational bullshit David Nolan had spouted at the town line, people couldn't just stop doing the jobs they had magically imbued skills to do when they all came from a world devoid of technology and pretty much everything else relevant to being a functional person in this world.

In short, if they didn't keep on with the lives Regina gave them, they'd all be shitting in the woods with her boyfriend.

So, no, the citizens of Storybrooke were not happy to be pulled out of their warm beds on a Saturday morning to deal with more tokenism.

But, of course, they obediently wrote down names on their ping-pong balls - not with any great enthusiasm or thoughtfulness, mind you - and then slumped back into their chairs, texting on their phones while the King and Queen of Cluelessness changed Little Prince No Name's diaper and Queen-Sort-of-Regent Regina griped at Prince-But-Not-Really-Because-He-Was-Born-A-Bastard Henry for trying to sneak off to Camelot.

When at last the little prince's butt was clean and swaddled in a diaper that _finally_ didn't fall off, because neither of his parents had bothered to take any kind of childbirth and rearing classes, Snow and Charming toted the tot up to the front of the room and the King who was really just a Prince Consort if those two had obeyed actual established rules of royalty, spun the bin a dozen or so times.

"Well, this is it!" chirped Snow White, and she pulled out a the 42 ball and read, "Jermajesty Kyd?"

"What?" sputtered David and hissed in his wife's ear, "seriously!? No way are we naming him that, Snow!"

"Who would write such an atrocious name!?" Snow huffed, indignant. "If one of you have broken the charm, we will find you, so you'd better just admit to it! Who wrote this!? It's barely even legible!"

Of course, in the front row of the gathered assembly, Roland of Locksley raised his hand high and exclaimed, "Can I have a cookie now?"

Standing off to the side, Regina snorted, "You should have put an age line on your Goblet of Fire, Madam Mayor."

"We'll just pick another-"

"No can do, dearie!" piped up Rumplestiltskin from the back of the room where he'd mysteriously appeared in that creepy and dramatic way he always did. "You had me charm it. Your terms were quite clear. First name out is the one. Unless you'd like the price to circumvent that. Or, more than likely, little Jermajesty would pay it!"

David glared at his wife. "I told you we shouldn't have gone to him! Why do you always want to go to him when he always screws us over!?"

"It was a simple spell to keep our enemies from interfering, David! He wasn't being malicious!"

"No, you were just being shortsighted as usual in your requests," the Dark One pointed out. "Either way, it removes my son's name for your bloodline, which is good enough for me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going back to my nice warm house to do something that is not a gigantic waste of everyone's time."

And with that, everyone else got up grumbling and filed out of the Town Hall, leaving a defeated Mayor and annoyed suspended-without-pay co-Sheriff.

Smirking, Regina remarked, "You should probably stop at the ugly bird painting. Chances are you'll be looking at a recall soon. Oh, wait, _you weren't even elected_. Funny how you brought an angry mob to my house and made all sorts of demands about representation and living in a new democratic society, but you get one year back in ballgowns and sitting your ass on a cushy throne, and suddenly you're lapping up the power."

" _You_ told me that it was my position because I cast the Curse!"

"And _you_ believed me, so I could get a vacation from all of the civic employees who have decided since they are no longer under threat of dismemberment to slack off on their paperwork. Good luck with sorting through Mr. K's filing system while he takes an extended leave of absence for shingles."

Regina strutted out of the Town Hall onto the lawn where Robin was cleaning chocolate chip smudges off Roland's face.

"Regina," Robin greeted her with a hopeful look.

"We're still not back together," she said, and handed the many a wad of cash, "but this should get you a room at Granny's for the rest of the month."

"I feel rather bad about this," he said, but didn't refuse the money.

"They're idiots," Regina retorted. "They would have scarred him with whatever name they gave the boy."

"They did all right with Emma."

"Which Granny chose because she misheard Snow and had already embroidered the blanket and Snow felt too bad about it to say anything. They were going to call her 'Annawrad' which isn't even a correct spelling, presumably as some quip about her not having any dark potential. Subtlety is not exactly their strong-suit."

* * *

AN: Yes, Regina paid Robin to have Roland submit a stupid name. I like to think Roland came up with it himself at the Coronation after Emma's blowup over the name "Neal" and Regina overheard and began to plot the downfall of her frenemy through the humiliation of the next generation. The two parts of the chapter would suggest that Belle and Rumple might have been in on it, Belle's revenge for that lack of apology and being reduced to a book-lending babysitter who is otherwise completely ignored by The Charmings. Belle and Regina might dislike each other, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all! "Jermajesty" is the name of Jermaine Jackson's offspring. Yikes! "Kyd" is actually the name of David Duchovny and Tea Leoni's son. Celebrities should really be forced to take drug tests before signing a birth certificate! I almost went with "Blanket", but since I reserve that for Zelena's nonexistent baby, and this is also sort of another dig at Emma (she just can't win!), it seemed funnier. Plus, Henry would probably be cool with no longer being called "Kid" as it seems pretty clear he disliked it from the pilot. "Anawrad" is a Welsh name that means "undisgraced, free of shame". I was looking for anything that would shorten to "Anna", the name Emma was given in the original pilot script. How Regina would even know this is a plothole that will remain unfilled. Anyone know the significance of the number 42 here? I'll take more than one! (On an aside, Storybrooke is again operating Sheriff free. Which reminds me, if the Dwarfs went to Camelot with everyone, then why when everyone returned memory-less were the Dwarfs acting as deputies? Wasn't one of them dressed like Emma and driving the patrol car? So did they get bored after a week and somehow use the Granny's Portal to get back to Storybrooke or did not all of them go?)

Next up: Back to Camelot.


	38. It is a Silly Place

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Guest (who left a review about bad names): Do you not understand the idiotic irony of what you just did? Seriously. (see above)**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE**

 **IT IS A SILLY PLACE**

 _Get it together get it together get it together,_ Emma recited in her head as she paced.

But it was hard when all she could think about overhearing Neal and Hook's talk about her, and the ways in which Neal was disgusted by her... which she wanted to be angry about, accept they were the source of her self-loathing, so that would be kind of hypocritical... and she was trying to be less hypocritical... which wasn't easy, since that was just one more quality from the Jones family genetic cesspool to lump in with the alcoholism, the insecurities, and a variety of other neurosis she'd really thought she had a handle on until getting to Storybrooke and being immersed in nasty-habits-reinforcing family values.

Emma fingered the keychain and looked woefully at the little trinket that she no longer deserved to wear.

 _Of course_ Neal wouldn't want to be with her. The only thing he wanted to be less than like his father was like his mother, so choosing her would be the equivalent of that.

If only they could go back to their original ignorance about who she was, back to Portland, and made different choices, Emma lamented. Maybe she could have been good, had all that nasty stuff cut out, or at least tamed like her father who'd turned out a pretty decent guy thanks to his kindhearted mother her mother - who for all of her own problems, at least was a positive influence in curbing David's violent impulses.

In that other life she'd thought she could be that for Hook, but she'd ended up having to lose so much of herself for it and gained nothing meaningful in the end - because he wasn't really a deeper person than he let on, he really was just a pretty slut who wasn't that nice or that clever.

That relationship had been all secrets and lies built on more secrets and lies until she'd had herself fooled that she was happy - which pathetically wasn't even that hard when she'd never really known what happiness was apart from one fleeting afternoon when a very different future had been just within reach.

Emma used to dream about that life in prison, and finally went to Tallahassee to excise it like removing a tumor and two years of emotional chemotherapy and radiation until she could finally wake in the morning without expecting Neal beside her and a baby crying in the other room of a beach house that didn't exist.

She'd left that life and that Emma in Tallahassee. She'd had to become a harder version of herself to do it, bury deep many parts of her that would always be tied to Neal and her son. Henry finding her had started to force some of those parts up. Finding Neal... she'd felt more of them fighting for daylight, and that had terrified her so much that she'd avoided him, felt relief both times he died, and never tried to save him.

The truth was, she hadn't wanted to be that version of herself again, because she'd spent the years since convincing herself that she was weak and stupid. She was the Emma who kept trusting people and being hurt and left behind. She was the Emma who wasn't strong enough to keep the only family she might ever have. And _that_ Emma certainly wasn't strong enough to be a Savior.

She'd thought the Emma of her own creation was the better and stronger one. And that Emma had never really taken down the walls around her heart. Oh, everyone thought she had, and she told herself that she was - but in a way that she was still the one in control, because being in control was being strong. What a joke! She hadn't been in love and she hadn't been in control. It was all just one big farce that began in that hospital room when she turned away from her crying baby and told herself that she couldn't be a mother.

And now her son would always look at her with a hint of betrayal and disappointment in his brown eyes.

Eyes he got from his father who'd endured centuries of torment without breaking, who'd yet given up his happiness without thought more than once - who would always see her as weak and foolish for not fighting to _stay_ the person he'd fallen in love with in spite of her suffering.

 _Get it together get it together get it to-_

"Well well," an oily voice uttered from the darkness, "who have we here?"

* * *

"That could be poisoned!" Neal hissed at Hook as the pirate, now decked out in much fancier but still rakish clothes, popped an hors d'oeuvre into his mouth as they loitered in the ballroom near the bottom of the grand staircase.

"Then I'll die with a full stomach," Hook shot back with a shrug, then smirked as another one of the ladies in waiting batted their eyes at Neal and amended, "You know they're only into you because they're sand stoned. The stuff must make bookish unattractive midgets sexy."

"But not alcoholic idiots with bald spots."

"Wanker."

"At least I don't need to get back a giant ship to compensate for the size of mine."

"Just for that, _Nealfire_ ," Hook huffed and took the plate of crab puffs, "you are not getting any of..." He trailed off as he noticed Emma descending the staircase. "Bloody hell," he uttered, "what _is_ she wearing? It's so... girlie and flowery and unbecoming. She looks like my cousin at her tenth birthday party when Nana tried to sacrifice her to the Old Gods to ensure a bountiful harvest.

"Nana was a bit crazy," amended Hook, as if that was necessary.

Looking awkwardly between them - this was their first time alone together since she'd run off - Emma greeted, "So..."

"You look stupid, Swan," Hook broke the ice. "Why are you the only one dressed like that? Is the King planning to sacrifice you to fertilize his botanical garden? If he sets the Merlin Tree on fire, you should be worried."

"I'll keep that in mind," Emma groaned. "Look, about earlier..."

"You hate me, you blame me for your turning out to be an obviously unkind individual who injures persons just trying to turn over a new leaf and help the greater good and all that out of an inability to forgive even family for errors in judgment. I get it. I feel the same way about my father, may he rest in peace."

" _You killed him_ ," Neal hissed.

"Yes, and I feel bad about that. I sent Liam a card with a rainbow that I drew myself. It wasn't very good, I'll admit, but it's the thought and apology that counts."

"'I'm sorry your father is dead, especially because I killed him?'" Neal scoffed.

" _It's the thought that counts_."

"Whatever," sighed Emma. "Look, we have to get Excalibur away from that sleeze. As long as he has it, he can kill us all. No magic can protect against being wounded by that blade. It also controls Merlin, so we have to get it before freeing him."

"Okay, but how? And how are we going to free Merlin? Chop the tree down with the sword?" asked Neal.

"I don't know. Last time's plan won't work," grimaced Emma. "I'll try to think of something, though. You guys focus on the sword since I can't touch it."

"Why-"

"I just _can't_ ," she told Hook. "And by 'you guys', I mean Hook being a distracting asshole who can bromace Farther-"

"Farther?"

"Faux-Arthur."

"That is _way_ worse than Emmabilia!" Neal complained.

"I'm sorry, I'm a bit tired from fighting ancient evil spirits to get a damned magical matchbook," Emma snapped. "As I was saying, Hook, you distract Farthur. Neal, you get the sword."

"Do you even know how to use a sword, mate?" scoffed Hook.

"I had a cutlass for three hundred years!"

"You were fourteen and you used it to cut down vines."

"The thing is _half_ a sword. It's not even fit to be used in an actual sword fight," Neal argued, "and anyway, the blade is dark magic poisoned to send anyone it nicks to Hell."

"Not actual Hell," Emma interjected.

"Close enough to Hell. Cora and Pan are there. Would you like to pay them a visit?" Neal threatened. "I'm sure Emma won't save your dumbass wanker self this time!"

"Like she didn't save yours?"

"Stop it!" Emma hissed. "Now is not the time for another infantile tantrum over a piece of magic shit!"

Neal snorted. "Like yours before you brought Captain Syphilis here back from the dead?"

"We are _not_ getting into that here."

"Why not? This is where it all started," countered Neal, crossing his arms in indignation. "Right here, in this castle, in the land of betrayal and fucked up rape love advertised as beautiful destined epic amazingness. Remind me again, how long did it take you to throw the symbol of our life together, our love, _the promise you made to me_ , into the gutter and replace it with _his_ brother's creepy ass ring that _my mother wore_ and he pried off her dead hand to wear around his neck as a momento of carrying out revenge? Oh, let's see, _six weeks_."

"That's not fair. I didn't choose to lose it when I was transported without my clothes to the Enchanted Forest!"

"It would have gone with you if you'd actually given a fuck!" Neal shot back. "And you had plenty of time to go looking for it back in Storybrooke after you mind fucked everyone!"

"I was too busy mind fucking everyone!"

"Yeah, with dreamcatchers! You didn't even _think_ of mine. You didn't give that asshole over there the real story behind it either!"

"Because he asked about it when I brought it back from New York and I didn't want to tell him! Just like I didn't want to tell him about the keychain if he asked! Just because he was perfectly happy to share his sordid stories of his murder rings didn't mean I wanted him to know everything about my past shit, okay!?"

"Hey! I'm right here!" Hook grumbled.

"And it sounded more romantic," Emma continued, ignoring him, "that you gave it to me a long time ago than that we found it in the room where we fucked for the last time and then I didn't see it again for twelve years, and finally retrieved it from your apartment where your murderer was raping your friend after your death and after he tossed all your other stuff in the trash!"

"So, we were just 'fucking' now?" Neal growled. "And don't give me that bullshit, Emma. You let Hook riffle through your keepsake box. You got all cute and cuddly over it, cuddly with this douchebag you'd been dating for like a goddamn week who a couple weeks before that was trying to murder you!"

"I was emotionally vulnerable! I missed you, but you weren't there. He was! And my foster mom was trying to turn me into a host for her dead sister's soul! It was a really complicated time in my life!"

"Every time in your life was complicated, Emma! _And he was a murdering rapist who left you and everyone you loved for dead!_ " Neal shot back.

" _You left me_!" Emma snapped loudly enough that people in the vicinity stopped smoozing to look.

"You're making a scene, luv," Hook hissed, but was again ignored.

"Not for dead!" Neal shot back. "And not to go to prison, so don't even try it. Yeah, I fucked up trusting August, but you don't get to throw that shit at me when you decide to make that splintered asshole your new BFF. And you can't just blame all your bad judgment and screwing over your family on being distracted by magical shit."

"I KNOW!" Emma cried and threw her hands in the air in defeat.

"What do you want me to say, Neal?" she continued, "I was fucking angry with you for dying again? I wanted to destroy everything good that we shared so not having it wouldn't hurt so much, including our son? I'm fucked up, okay? I know that! I ruined everything because I was afraid and selfish and angry, and I thought I could just escape the past and all of that hurt by rebranding all of the good stuff as... dark crap... or giving it to Hook. If I erased you from my life, then I wouldn't feel guilty that I didn't choose you, that I kept not choosing you and something real and painful, and then I could be happy with the shallow sham of love I needed to not feel alone."

"Happy with someone who called you an orphan, who called you pathetic," Neal reminded.

"He hurt me, but so did you," Emma reminded.

"Yeah, but he _meant_ it. And you forgave him. I didn't, and you damned me to your personal Hell. You left me to... whatever while trying to save the souls of assholes."

Neal shook his head. "You sold out to the other side, Emma. You foresaked everything it is to be a real hero in favor of a fake one, of a villain wearing a hero's mask. And I know you got your soul ripped out, but I can't just pretend all of that stuff you did, with or without it, never happened. You don't need a soul to do the right thing. Just like you don't need a heart to love. And with or without... you gave up on me. How can I ever trust you again? How can I ever truly love you _when you're related to him_? I mean, you had _twice_ the good in you even without a soul, and you still couldn't love _me_."

"I'm sorry," Emma sniffed and for the second time hurried away, nearly knocking over staring guests as she did.

Among them, King Farther uttered to Guinevere, "Well, they've certainly brought some much needed drama to our kingdom. I can't recall the last time we had some tragically operatic love affair, what with this being a land of perfect true love."

"Yes, it is entertaining, Smoopiekins," agreed the Queen with glazed eyes.

King Farther moved to lay his hand upon the hilt of his sword... and frowned to find the hilt was covered in grease and crumbs... and wasn't even actually his sword, but a well-worn cutlass smeared with crab puff crumbs.

King Farther balled his hands into fists and shouted, "THE OUTSIDERS ARE SPIES OF THE DARK ONE! FIND THEM AND KILL THEM!"

* * *

In the courtyard, Emma collapsed to the ground, giving into the tears she'd been holding in for over a day and probably longer than that. She'd been holding out some stupid hope that Neal would change his mind, that the moment of affection at Granny's was more than just a... a friendly gesture to make her feel better.

As she bawled on the ground like an over-dramatic teenage girl pranked at the high school prom, suddenly there was swirl of magic and a hand reached down to pull her up.

"We meet again, Emma."

As she gaped at Merlin and wiped away her tears, Neal and Hook came running out of the castle, chased by guards.

Merlin simply waved a hand and just like that they were all whisked away and redeposited in the field of Middlemists, which had no business being in bloom this early in spring.

"See?" Neal nodded, "told you it would work, _mate_."

It took Emma several moments to realize what had happened, because _of course_ , Neal knew how she'd freed Merlin the last time.

"You conned me!" she shouted.

Neal looked mildly apologetic as he responded, "Sorry?"

Emma shoved him hard. " _You complete and utter jerk!"_

"Oh, come on, it was a page from your playbook!" Neal defended. "And it worked."

Emma sniffed. "So... everything you said back there... and in the forest...?"

"I figured you'd be eavesdropping like you did on Henry and Violet," Neal conceded, "but in case you weren't, I had to be pretty brutal at the ball."

"So... you don't hate me? You don't think I'm a... a genetically defective slut?"

"Naw. I'm not proposing marriage. I still don't know if we can get to being able to make each other happy as we did once," Neal told her honestly, "but I do want to believe that you're sorry and forgive you, Emma. I'm not promising it'll be overnight. You hurt me. You hurt our son. And being here is a painful reminder of that. But I'm not against getting a coffee now and then, seeing where we stand. Seeing if the Emma Swan I fell in love with is still in there, underneath all of the bitterness and magical bullshit."

With a shrug, he amended, "I know once you start changing, it's not so easy to change back. I'm not Baelfire anymore, not sure if I could ever be again. Not sure if I even want to be, honestly. I think we're both a mess. And maybe too broken to fix each other now, in that way. But you're still my friend, Emma. Or, at least, I'd like to be again."

Well, it wasn't what she _really_ wished for, but it was a start. Emma managed a sniffed, "I'd like that too," and hugged Neal tightly.

"Your dress and that flower wreath thing really are stupid," he chuckled.

"Jerk," Emma huffed, and lightly shoved him away.

Merlin smiled in his creepy hippie guru way and Hook rolled his eyes and munched on another crab puff.

"You stole the tray of crab puffs!?" Neal exclaimed.

"And some silverware and a lass' garter belt and another wench's broach..."

Neal rolled his eyes. "Did my father bewitch your hook as part of some nefarious deal involving the cleaning of your coat?"

" _No_. That's ridiculous. I told you, I have catlike reflexes."

"The only thing cat-related to you is the amount of pussy you've plundered," Emma scoffed, then amended, "oh, wait, that's right, you shag your conquests in the-"

" _Ahem_ ," Merlin cut them off. "Arthur-"

"Farther," Hook corrected. "Or are you intending to besmirch the good name of your former adolescent pawn? Or just trying to not tell us all the facts like big important wizards like to do - or not do as it were. We saved your bloody arse. Might want to do us the kindness of full disclosure, mate."

"No, you played right into _Farther's_ hands," Merlin shot back. "And why would I want to bestow kindness on someone who's only reason for not killing me in cold blood is a conscience that amounts to 'I might still be able to have intercourse with my great granddaughter if I play nice'. I'm sorry, _mate_ , but we are not bros."

"How do you even know what 'bros' is let alone that other stuff?" huffed Hook, annoyed.

"How did I appear to little Emma in a movie theater when I was trapped in a tree by my ill-fated true love centuries ago?" countered Merlin and he shrugged. "It's not important. What matters is that I cannot take us beyond the borders of Camelot. The spell cast upon the people here to make them loyal to their king reinforces a barrier that keeps everyone in. We must free them from their thrall."

"Can't Excalibur do that?" asked Neal. "I mean, with the Promethian spark, we unbind you from it and my father from the Dark One which'll be destroyed."

"No, it was not involved in the casting of the Obedience Spell. That was the Avalon sand. For that we must free Guinevere and the rest will follow. She was the first victim."

"How do we do that?" asked Emma.

"True love."

"Oh, _naturally_ ," groaned Neal. " _Everything_ is solved by true love."

"Bugger off. True love is a beautiful thing, Nealfire!" Hook argued.

"Yeah, it's really beautiful when you're proclaiming it during sex _not in the arse_ with your own great granddaughter that resulted in her being impregnated with the evil future mother of the Antichrist and regularly thereafter while also shagging on the side Henry's wife who also bore your bastard spawn and got Emma killed."

"Thanks for that reminder," Emma grumbled, throwing Neal a glare.

Hook scowled. "Yes, well, _real_ true love is a beautiful thing. Obviously, that was some sort of misunderstanding for which I am _now_ going to have to join the bloody Crocodile in therapy with the Cricket."

"Knowledge is power," smirked Neal.

"Sometimes it's just disgusting," sighed Emma.

Hook offered a crab puff from his pocket and she glared. "Seriously?"

"What? It's not my flask. And they're quite delicious."

"I hate you," Emma hissed. "I really _really_ hate you."

Arms crossed, she stomped off a ways, intentionally pausing to stomp on the flowers in her path as she went like a petulant and destructive child.

"Well?" Hook elbowed Neal. "Go talk to her."

"Hell no."

"What do you mean 'hell no'? She just hugged you! You're on her good side. And she's _your_ mental ex-girlfriend."

"Because having to defend anything about you will put me on her bad side. And I'm also not going to defend anything about you, because it's all amoral and disgusting. _And_ she was your mental descendant first."

Hook scowled and turned toward Merlin... who had vanished.

"Sonofa-"

The pirate shoved his remaining crab puffs at Neal. "Fine. But you owe me."

"Actually, after leaving me to be hunted _Hunger Games_ style by an immortal psychopath for centuries," Neal countered, "no, actually, I don't _ever_ owe you _anything_."

* * *

"Go away, Hook!" Emma snapped the moment she heard his pointy boots crunching in the snow behind her.

"You know that doesn't work on me, luv. It's part of my charm! I never give up on those I care for."

"You mean those you stalk to try and shag?" Emma scoffed and glared.

"Yes, well, I am starting to rethink the shagging part. While I'm sure there's enough generations between us to reduce the incest to socially acceptable levels," Hook retorted, "you're rather mental. I preferred you when you moped and cried and begged me for rum and a flirtatious exchange. When saying 'go away' meant 'try harder and I'll kiss you'. No you scream about everything and hit me. Not really my thing."

"It's what you deserve," Emma grated out. "You're a lying piece of scum, Hook, and if you knew what it meant to care about anyone, you wouldn't have gone along with Neal's shitty con!"

"I care about myself and getting out of this kingdom alive, and that required going along with Nealfire's plan. You weren't exactly a font of wisdom, Swan, so we devised something of a plan hinging on your emotional instability, which I know was a bit harsh, but all things considered, I don't know why it's me you're incensed over when the chap still doesn't want you to be his wench. Frankly, Swan, I don't know what you see in him."

"Truth," answered Emma grimly. "He's the only one who's ever given me that."

"Apart from lying about being the son of Rumplestiltskin from a magical land of fairies and ogres and just now when he said he loathed you and thought you were a pathetic, irredeemable loser?"

Emma glowered, "Yeah, apart from that."

"It's rather a big something on both counts. I left you for dead and then you fell in love with me, did you not? And I apparently called you a useless whore or something equally insulting and you risked your life for me," scoffed Hook. "I'd call your wanting to be with Neal rather suspect and send _you_ to therapy."

"Why does everyone keep saying I need therapy!?" Emma growled. "And the last person I want relationship advice from is _you_. You didn't tell me about trading your ship - _and left out the part about how you got it by leaving Eric to die_ \- just because you were looking for the right moment when I was at my most emotionally vulnerable to spring your half truth revisionist history of your half-assed, ass-tapping-motivated 'heroism' on me so I'd make out with you!"

"That never happened!"

"For me it did, and don't pretend that's not why you were waiting outside of Granny's!"

"Okay, fine, but there's no need to mention 'ass-tapping', Swan! You know it's a... soar point for me!"

"You're an _asshole_ , Hook," Emma told him with a snort. "I ruined my second chance swooning over you. And now I've ruined my third because I chose being with you over doing the right thing every time. I was juvenile and selfish. Maybe I still am. Stuck in some arrested development compounded by some fairy tale bullshit emotional and intellectual regression."

She sighed and picked up one of the broken flowers, remembering how she'd once held one as such a cherished possession.

"Neal got stuck as a teenager in Neverland and I got stuck with the emotional maturity of a teenager in the Land Without Magic," Emma grumbled. "Which is maybe what was kindred about you and me _,_ " she directed at the pirate. "Too emotionally stunted assholes who wanted to believe they could take two wrongs and make a right out of it so they wouldn't have to take accountability for any of the lives they ruined."

Shaking her head, Emma tossed the flower back to the ground and told him, "But I don't want to be that anyone. I want to grow up. I don't want some shallow teenage infatuation advertised as epic passionate romance. I want actual love, an actual connection with someone that's not just... smashing mouths and bumping genitals and pretending that means something because it feels good. Love isn't always intense, heart-wrenching emotion. And sometimes that feeling is just a mess of endorphines that screw up what your brain processes as attraction, so you almost die with someone enough times, you think that feeling means you love them - when it's just that you both love not dying - in close proximity.

"Well, that and your MILF fetish."

"What? I wouldn't touch milk if it was mixed with rum!"

" _MILF_ , you idiot," sighed Emma. "It means you have a sexual obsession with women who've born children. Put together that you chose me, mother of your last lover's grandchild who is also your great grandchild, and you have one _hell_ of an oedipal complex... and that means you want to fuck your mother."

"I know who Oedipus is!" Hook huffed. "And I do not want to fuck my mother! She's dead. I draw the line at necrophilia, Swan."

He glanced around and muttered, "Where the _hell_ did that wizard go anyway?"

* * *

AN: Did you know that in _The Wickerman_ the main protagonist is Neil looking for a girl who's last name is Morrison? The bit about the card is taken from the "Undercover Ren" sketch on SNL when Undercover Boss Kylo Ren gives a condolences card to the officer whose son he killed.

Next up: Two black characters appear in a scene together and neither of them is murdered by a white "hero".


	39. Black Merlin

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Jane on Chapter 37: Of course kids will call him "jerk-majesty"! It's too good to pass up, right?**

 **Note to Mir on Chapter 38: Glad you like the chapter titles. And Camelot. I had to force myself to write it. Hook probably will end up in therapy, though I couldn't possibly write that any better than eleven19 in "It's Always Sunny in Storybrooke" so I think I'll stick to the AA meeting.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR**

 **BLACK MERLIN**

It just wasn't Lancelot's day... for the past 11,000 days or so. Sitting in his dingy cell, the demoted and formerly exiled Knight of the Round Table lamented his unfortunate situation.

He never should have left the employ of Snow White and Prince Charming, but he had never stopped worrying about Guinevere, and though Arthur had told him that she would be safe so long as he left, could one really trust a psychopath?

Lancelot hadn't known what to make of his old friend's change in personality. Oh, he'd eventually chalked it up to Excalibur, but then that said something quite troubling about the sword that was in legend forged by Merlin from the Holy Grail to choose only the king a kingdom truly deserved.

So, then he'd wondered for awhile if the people of Camelot were so horrible, doing such despicable things in secret that they deserved King Arthur.

 _Then_ he'd fallen in love with Gwen and everything had gone to hell!

Or to the Vault of the Dark One, anyway.

Long story short, he'd been exiled, spent a few years observing the people and rulers of other kingdoms, then decided once there was peace in the Enchanted Forest to try returning to Camelot.

Well, okay, it was _more_ than that.

He'd come across a sorceress who could turn into a dragon who'd relayed a rumor that Excalibur was actually _demonic_ not angelic and tied to the Dark One in some fashion. And if _that_ was the case, then if he destroyed it, he could save his friend and kingdom and possibly the people of the Enchanted Forest as well.

Upon returning to Camelot, he'd pretended to pledge allegiance back to Arthur, saying he was no longer in love with Gwen, that it was only ever an infatuation. During that time, he'd discovered the King's amassed library on the true nature of Excalibur, troubling correspondences with Merlin's former apprentice that suggested the old white wizard was a bigot and a traitor, and _worst of all_ that Arthur wasn't even _Arthur_ but that his friend had been murdered long ago by a bastard king from another magical universe who'd traveled here with an equally psychotic magical scribe who'd used his magic quill and ink to physically transform him into Arthur and get him an unlimited supply of what was supposed to be long-vanished Avalon sand to mind-trick everyone while they "enjoyed" temporal limbo.

Lancelot had been ready to try leaving Camelot to seek out help when the Outsiders appeared. He'd intended to warn them at the ball that Arthur was not as he appeared, but in abandoning his post, he'd proven that he was not under the King's mind control and he was found out and thrown in the dungeon before Princess Emma was even announced.

The poor princess. He'd left before her birth, but he'd heard about the Evil Queen's threat, and, in all honesty, he hadn't a great deal of faith in her parents to stop it. They were his friends, but they were not very intelligent individuals. Which had been all the more reason to destroy Excalibur. If it destroyed the Dark One, it would also destroy the Dark Curse created by the first Dark One and ipso facto... everyone who deserved it would get their a happy endings!

So much for _that_ plan, though.

"Need a little help?"

Lancelot's head shot up and he narrowed his eyes at the stranger outside his cell. "Who are you?"

"Merlin."

" _You're_ Merlin?" Lancelot sputtered. "I thought Merlin-"

"Would be a wrinkled old white dude, not a handsome brother, obviously," nodded Merlin. "This kingdom is very racist. Look at poor Violet, Guinevere's cousin? Her mother was killed for being too 'ethnic' and her father is both too mind-controlled to care and too stupid to imagine that bravery and importance can be found in intellectual pursuits. He would rather his daughter marry a man she did not love who was known for breaking men's skulls on the jousting track than one who could chart the night sky and discover its secrets."

Merlin suddenly grimaced, then amended, "Speaking of dumb crackers, it seems my compatriots finally recalled they can summon me with Excalibur. Shall we?" He waved his hand, vanishing the cell bars and as he laid a hand on Lancelot's arm they were transported to the forest where Emma was seething at Hook over the now tattered and burnt flower he'd offered as an apology for tricking her and Neal was threatening to cut the both of them with the sword if they didn't shut up before they attracted Farther's knights.

Merlin cleared his throat loudly and they all startled.

"I was beginning to think it hadn't worked," said Neal.

"It simply doesn't have the _immediate_ pull of its twisted half."

"Yeah, what's with that, anyway? Who makes a sword like that? It's useless for fighting."

"It's Demonic. It's not like I had control over it," Merlin pointed out.

"Who the hell are you?" Hook addressed their newcomer. "Wizard Boy's brother?"

"Yes, because _all_ black people look related," scoffed Lancelot.

"Settle down, mate, I'm not racist! I just didn't see any other people of your... particular skin tone at the ball."

"And I suppose you thought I was under a Sleeping Curse for centuries while he was trapped in a tree?"

"Okay, okay," Emma stepped in. "Look, Hook isn't racist, he's just a dumbass who's killed half of his brain cells with rum and the other half with syphilis."

"It's true," nodded Merlin. "And whatever was left he stunted huffing pixie dust in Neverland which doubled both his randiness and his neurosis... on top of the effects of the drinking homemade rum and the syphilis. Which doesn't discount his being a border-line psychopath regardless of subsequent substance abuse problems and sexually transmitted diseases. He was simply a high functioning - or at least somewhat functioning - psychopath until he destroyed the non-deviant portions of his brain, thus reducing his potential to that of a lecherous alcoholic with stalkerish perversions and Attention Deficit Disorder."

"Attention Deficit Disorder?" asked Lancelot while Hook glared at the Wizard.

Merlin replied, "You remember Sir Durnure. Poor bastard couldn't ever make it through a meeting and would get distracted five minutes into a quest... usually by some busty farmer's daughter. He probably had syphilis as well, now that I think about it..."

"Hey, _mates_ ," Hook growled, "I function perfectly well _in all respects_ , thank you very much. And I have charmed many a lass without alcohol or any sort of 'perversions'. I happen to be quite charming and poetic when the mood strikes! And I lifted King Crazy's sword, didn't I? I think that was quite clever of me!"

"In my experience," Lancelot retorted, "eloquent men are right every bit as often as imbeciles."

"Got that right," muttered Emma.

"Anyway," continued Merlin, "we were discussing Guinevere."

"No, we weren't," said Hook.

"We were supposed to be, before your idiocy got us side-tracked away from the primary focus of our mission," Merlin shot back. "Now, the Queen. I _was_ going to use magic to take Lancelot to her," he said, with a sour look now at Neal, "before you summoned me back here."

"Yeah, _doofus_ ," tutted Hook.

"Yeah, well," Neal accused Merlin, "you just poofed away without explanation."

"It's not as though any of you were interested in listening when preoccupied by your asinine romantic problems."

"Asinine!?" they all exclaimed.

"Yes. I have more important things to worry about than who shagged whose kin when and why or left which of you for dead due to various emotional and psychological complexes," sighed Merlin in exasperation. "I know it must come as a shock to you, but being racially and economically privileged individuals does not mean your adolescent romantic troubles are more important than preventing the unleashing of an allegorical Hell upon this allegorical Earth.

"So," Merlin amended, looking rather like a scolding parent, "are you all going to shut the fuck up and help me get my kingdom back?"

* * *

AN: Two unrelated black characters in one scene AND neither of them were murdered!? Did your brain explode? Lancelot's dig at Hook "In my experience, eloquent men are right every bit as often as imbeciles" is what Tyrion Lannister said to Hizdahr zo Loraq after complimenting his eloquence in calling out Daenerys' hypocrisy regarding Meereen's self-determination in _Game of Thrones_ "The Dance of Dragons". ("Black Merlin" is a nod to the Adult Swim show _Black Jesus_.)

Next up: If you're wondering why Emma didn't meet Merlin in Purgatory, it's so they could have a real life chat.


	40. White Tulip

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE**

 **WHITE TULIP**

"I deserved to be king," defended Farquaad from behind the bars of his cell. "When The Author came to me and told me of Arthur's research into The Grail... I wanted that power, a power I could not have in my land, even with the magic of his quill."

"You can't pull the 'I was just a pawn of a more evil villain' card," Emma retorted. "I don't care if the Ghost of Hitler told you to do it to get your happy ending that you deserved. It's _bullshit_. You don't get excuses when you used magic dust to brainwash people, including a woman you basically raped for five going on five hundred years."

"It was the only way to make them accept me after a few early missteps," huffed Farquaad. "The people disliked me. Not because I was a tyrant and a terrible leader who hosted baby fights, which I now realize is weird and not that entertaining even after the addition of the cobra, but because I spent all of my time researching. The people - my own wife - had no respect for a man of scholarly pursuits!"

"Because they were _evil_ scholarly pursuits," scoffed Lancelot. "You missed every anniversary, every birthday, every solstice ball _with your wife_ to study how to help unleash evil onto the world so you could rule this kingdom forever as some sick deal with the Devil."

"To be fair, I never actually met Satan," said Farquaad, "just his assistant Azreal. He was a douche."

"You're a douche," said Guineviere. "I don't even know what that means, but you are one. And the only reason people had no respect for intellectuals is because no one ever showed them that something positive could come from math and literature after Vortegan's culture of bloodshed. In retrospect, some book-learning might have clued us all in that our king was replaced by a psychotic impostor."

"Also," Hook interjected, "might have been a clue that your book-learning-obsessed 'king', instead of using his being king to build schools and libraries and printing presses spent all his time throwing balls and making speeches about how real heroism is saving damsels in distress."

Guineviere gave him an annoyed look and he shrugged and stated, "Just saying, luv."

" _I was brainwashed_."

"But _before_ you were brainwashed. I mean, who can't tell when they're best friend from childhood that they've been shagging for years is replaced by a psychopath?"

"Yeah," scoffed Neal, "it's like not knowing you were the Dark One."

" _That never happened!_ " Hook huffed.

"Not in any life _you_ remember..."

While the group continued to argue, Emma noticed Merlin's pinched expression and followed him to the courtyard where he'd spent so long in arboreal form.

"I'm guessing that didn't go down quite how you foresaw, did it?" she prompted.

"Nothing every quite does."

"Got that right," sighed Emma and she shook her head. "I was hoping that this time would be different, a second chance, get everything right, get... forgiveness or respect or whatever for doing the right thing, for finally letting my walls down."

"You expected Neal would fall back into your arms. That he would put behind him those past grievances."

Emma sighed and wrapped he cloak more tightly around her for warmth as she answered, "It's just hard. I always seem to push the right people away at the wrong time and let the wrong people in at the right time... if that makes any sense. I know part of it is being messed up not having parents and then having famous parents and then having a brother who can be everything to them I never can and giving up my own kid whose always going to have a bond with Regina that I'll never be able to... to duplicate even with those fake memories. There's all of that and probably a shit ton more and the end result is that I don't choose the people I should when I should or how I should."

With a shrug Emma disparaged, "I guess I have a shitty gatekeeper. All I know is that when Neal hurt me, it took me until after he'd died twice to really forgive him, to love him again, so I can't really expect any different from him, can I?"

"It is always difficult to expect better of others than we are ourselves capable of," said Merlin.

"You're saying Neal is a better person than I am?"

"Perhaps just a less self-loathing person," the Wizard restated, "and I know a little something about that."

"What, the whole wanting to die to be rid of your immortality that turned your true love into the Dark One thing? Yeah, I get that," sighed Emma. "Been there, done that... sort of, maybe not the true love thing, although if it's all subjective, then maybe it doesn't matter magically speaking if it's incestuous and wrong?"

Emma shrugged again and continued, "I really messed up with romance. I got caught up in that fairy tale nonsense, you know? Like these stupid flowers," she complained of the pink monstrosities growing in a garden urn. "And every time Hook plagiarized some line from _The Princess Bride_ or just looked dashing or whatever. I let myself get... caught up in his charm and mystery and danger and the whole 'legends' thing. I guess... I told myself that I acted distant and disinterested at the start of whatever we were because I cared too much and was afraid to lose him too. Even though that was dumb. I mean, what was I losing other than a fanboy? But having a fanboy felt good."

"There is nothing that saddens me more than someone who does not know their own heart," Merlin uttered. "Emma, I have watched you. All that time trapped as I was, I could still extend my consciousness to other worlds - as you know - always watching, waiting for you to free me. And I saw you many times let people through those walls. You fell for Neal, and even after you felt betrayed by him, you were beginning to fall for Graham - and Walsh. And you became close to August, an ally, a friend, when your only other confident was Henry.

"You embraced your family, your son, your role as mother. You found friends in Storybrooke - and in the Enchanted Forest," reminded Merlin, "so it's ridiculous to say that you acted distant and disinterested in Hook's pursuit because you 'cared too much' and were 'afraid to lose him too'. It saddened me to see you convince yourself of that, try to replicate your parents romance so hard to be 'one of us' and gain their respect."

Wincing, Emma muttered, "It's that obvious?"

"You were pretty out of character, even for being separated from your soul - something I also know a little bit about," said Merlin.

"You told your mother after Neverland that he would always be only a 'fun trip to Vegas' and that you would never trust him with your son," he continued, to which Emma grimaced. "Those are not the words of a woman in denial of some deep abiding affection, of some attraction, a love at first sight triggering a fear of abandonment and a defense mechanism to protect your heart."

"We must have had... some connection, though, right?" Emma sighed.

"Beyond blood kinship, you mean? I realize that tends to mean little in this world beyond inheritance, but someone being fated to see you to some self-realization doesn't require true love or even knocking boots-"

"Knocking boots? _Seriously_?"

"My pop culture terms may be a bit outdated," admitted Merlin. "My point, Emma, you didn't care too much. You didn't care at all," Merlin told her, "at least not until you'd failed at your mission so many times that your only way to _stay in denial of that_ was a reinterpretation of the past. Well, that and a misplaced desperation to please your parents by emulating their love story so they wouldn't completely replace you with you brother," he amended.

"Don't try to reinterpret it again out of some feeling of shame for hurting Neal _or_ dragging this ignorant Hook into the mess, imposing on him all sorts of anger for crimes he never committed. Perhaps that is unfair, but don't try to read fate or even badly contrived sympathy into your motivations. It's human to feel guilt and anger. But it's also human to not feel anything for someone who doesn't deserve more than apathy - and that includes family."

"I wish you wouldn't call him that," Emma grumbled. "I hate that he _knows_ that. I hate that _Neal_ knows that. That I'm... _infected_ with whatever is wrong with that asshole, that it's in my DNA and it has to be at least half of what made _me_ an asshole, inutero spell fuckery or not."

"Possibly," Merlin conceded, "but you don't have to be defined by either half, Emma. _Or_ these walls that your mother made so _big_ a deal of when you first got to Storybrooke, which seems to have gotten stuck in your head and blown out of proportion.

"Everyone has walls," Merlin continued, "and yes, yours were higher and thicker than most, but you have always managed to love and care. Using a fear of doing so as an excuse for initial indifference turned passionate romance is both insulting to you _and_ to those you have genuinely loved-"

"Yeah, _I get that_ ," huffed Emma.

"And," Merlin continued unfazed, "perhaps you did let your walls _down_ for that pirate, but only to cover up the lie that was your love, no different from your scheming to cover up my death that went so deep you had even yourself fooled that you shouldered all blame and your love could overcome even death without a price."

"There is _always_ a price," Merlin stated. "There are things in which men should not meddle. Only God. Keep that in mind, Emma. You have been given a task, a _divinely ordained_ task, but that does not make you divine. It does not give you the right to pass judgment on anyone, to bless them _or damn them_. That is a mistake that I made."

"The Grail and Nimue, you mean."

The Wizard let out a sigh of his own and shook his head.

"If I could go back and bury that goblet instead of drinking from it, our world would be entirely different," Merlin considered, "a history not plagued by the Dark One, by that vile demon inserted into our stories by Lucifer. I let myself be swayed by _my_ vices, and in doing so I became the pawn of the Devil and damned every subsequent chapter, every new character in our world to a life and death in limbo. It is _my_ fault," he admitted grimly, "that our people have inferior souls, forever banned from Heaven.

"And it is now, as it was once before," Merlin told Emma, "your task to right my wrong, to overcome the obstacles Satan created, the self-perpetuating 'plotholes' if you will that have prevented our people from overcoming all those tropes and clichés and evolving, _growing up_ from children's stories to people who are whole and capable of breaking free from the chains that hold us in this literary bondage."

"But how?" Emma groaned. "I don't know _how_ to do any of this! Even knowing what happened before, I still feel... trapped and manipulated by these 'plotholes'. If I can't break free of them, if I can't defeat them, how can I be anyone's savior?"

"I suppose it would be cliché to say to believe in yourself," Merlin joked.

"Yeah, no shit," Emma snorted. "I wanted to believe I could do this, but picking up these pieces is far, far easier said than done."

"In my long life, what I have experienced, and what I have born witness to as an observer," said Merlin, "have led me often to wonder on such things as 'Does the punishment fit the crime?' and 'Can you ever give a younger person back their innocence?' I have seen how these questions permeate everything in your life, Emma."

"I used to think I knew what life was about," Emma told the immortal sorcerer with a grimace. "Then I discovered I was a fairy tale princess and it was one crazy revelation after another and I realized... I don't know anymore. I have no idea. Even after _death_ and being told I'm not really real and I have this important task, I still have no fucking clue what it's about. What _being real_ is supposed to be."

"Cherish that moment," Merlin told her and at her confused look amended, "when you don't know what life is about. That's truth."

"Seriously? That sounds like some fake guru bullshit," Emma scoffed. "And, anyway, a lot of good that truth will do me now. Maybe if I could go back to who I was before I went 'full bitch', if I could make different choices. Or even better to before I came up with a plan to steal those watches or leave the meeting place when Neal didn't call so we could have gone to Canada together, raised Henry..."

"It wouldn't have changed things now, where your life ended up."

"You can't really know that," argued Emma. "I don't care how old and immortal you are."

"I know that if you went back to that fork in the road," responded Merlin, "you'd still have ended up here. Maybe not here _exactly_ but somewhere similar. Your life would have taken a different path but still reached the same important highs and lows and brought you to a place where you lost Neal, where you had to save everyone - the only difference being that, perhaps, you would have understood love and succeeded."

He paused, then considered, "Or maybe you wouldn't have, and you still wouldn't be happy. Perhaps this is just your fate."

Merlin shrugged and said sagely, "At the end of every fork there's a cliff. Go ahead, take the road less traveled. You'll still find that cliff."

"But-"

"Whatever you think you could have changed in your life or his, Emma, you couldn't have," Merlin stated. "You were given a destiny, and it was always going to guide you, require that, in one way or another, you met and lost certain people, achieved certain things, and failed at others."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," Emma argued. "Either I screwed up my life or my life was fated to be screwed up and everyone I've ever met was just fate's bitch trying to push me in one direction or another?"

"I know it's little consolation," Merlin conceded. "I have certainly been 'fate's bitch' and been the reason that others suffered. My beloved... she had good reason to want Vortegan dead and doing so should not have corrupted her, but that demonic relic I had so foolishly believed was a gift from the gods twisted taking any life into corrupting her soul, binding it, and turning her body into a vessel for a magical virus that would infect so many down through the ages, turning my legacy into one of death and destruction of worlds.

"And those two boys," he sighed with a shake of his head. "I thought if I handed all of my knowledge to another he could keep the Dark Ones at bay until you came along as I had foreseen. I thought Arthur, born like your son with the Heart of the Truest Believer, could protect Camelot and Excalibur until that time - but the Darkness had become an entity that infected all of the shadows of our magical worlds and brought forth the weak-minded and ambitious with whispered promises of wealth and power to thwart my efforts at damage control.

"I should have known better," said Merlin. "I was a man trying to meddle in the affairs of Good and Evil that were begat far above and bellow the realms in which we mortals toil. I was given great powers by the darkest of fallen angels, compelled to forge the 'gift' into a weapon while believing I was doing God's work to protect his Holy Grail. All I did was sign over my true love's soul to Satan and ruin more worlds than you could ever know."

"So did I," Emma pointed. "Ruined all those worlds. We double ruined them and Existence ended. But I'm the one who was _supposed_ to do something great. You were just a guy who got played."

"Perhaps, but I let hubris take over," Merlin argued. "I thought I could fix those mistakes and only compounded them. I foresaw that you would come, that you _could_ save us - or damn us - and by interfering in your life, in just that one small moment when I distracted you as a girl, that I thought was significant in shaping your future, in assuring that our universe would be saved, I might well have caused the later, a self-fulfilling prophesy of destruction."

"I didn't even remember that moment until I met you again," Emma pointed out.

"But meeting me in that moment, Emma... Just a moment can alter the path of the future in ways not easily fixed. That moment... you missed what was important because I thought I _knew_ what was important. All I did was frighten a small girl and no matter how I exerted my power to try and fix that, it spiraled out of control. My attempts to reset history with the next generation are something I have failed at repeatedly, I'm afraid," Merlin concluded.

"Yeah," Emma agreed, "you do have that Dumbledore vibe. All powerful and all knowing and on the side of good, but screwing over little kids to do all the hard work like you really think you're helping them, but we're just disposable pawns in some greater fight. No offense, but I wouldn't name any future hypothetical children after you."

"None taken," Merlin replied and smiled ruefully. "I must admit that I do like lemon drops and have been known to go commando under my robes."

Emma crinkled her nose. "More sharing than I needed there."

Merlin just shrugged and told her, "I cannot tell you which fork or path to take, Emma. I am the last person who should guide anyone after all of my failures at doing so. I myself have wondered if by my actions, in betraying God by drinking from the Grail, that everything that has happened to me since was Him punishing me.

"But I can tell you what life is. It's making the most of what you have, finding happiness in each small moment you can and letting that be enough, be your strength to make it through the _big_ moments of darkness and despair.

"Life is in the small spaces, the little things that don't make it into fairy tales," said Merlin, "and that's where happiness _and strength_ lies. Not epic adventures fighting and besting evil foes or passionate kisses in flowering fields.

"Life is in your son's smile, a kind gesture from a stranger, the quiet support of a friend. Those things, they are what sustains us at our most desolate, and it's those small kindness we bestow on others by which we are ultimately jud-"

Suddenly, the wizard let out a gasp and his body jerked as a wound appeared in his stomach, the broken blade of a sword.

As Excalibur was pulled free, Emma startled at the woman wielding it. Guineviere smirkingly declared, "Your guards shouldn't have let that bitch have a word alone with me."

In a rage, Emma conjured a burst of magic and slammed Fem-Farquaad into the castle battlements.

Merlin, meanwhile, collapsed to the ground.

"I... I can save you," Emma exclaimed, kneeling beside him. "The Flame..."

"No, you must use it to unbind me, fuse the blades, and banish the Darkness," Merlin rasped. "I have lived long enough."

Fighting tears, Emma pulled the small magic flame from her satchel, the Dark One dagger from a rather uncomfortable if kind of sexy garter belt, and then passed the bloody broken blade and its twisted tip into the fire. As she did, the blades fused and the name 'Merlin' flashed in gold, imbued but hidden from sight in the metal he had reshaped.

As Merlin drew his last breath, the sword fought - or the Darkness in it - did, and her arm shook with the effort, but then it broke free, all of the darkness swirling out and into the flame with the wizard's soul where it was burned away.

Just as before, it seemed far too anti-climatic to really be gone.

The flame, the sword, the dagger, and the man bound to it for over a thousand years were reduced to ash.

This time, Emma sent a silent prayer for the wizard's torture soul as she scattered the ashes into the wind.

* * *

It was with both heavy hearts and a sense of relief that the trio left Camelot under the leadership of Lancelot and Guineviere. Now with much-needed horses loaded up with supplies for their journey to the Dark Castle and beyond, they set out through the snow-covered field, now devoid of dots of demonic pink that Emma supposed would forever haunt her dreams.

The Dark One had been destroyed, but not without another causality... yet another that seemed unavoidable, predestined by fate to never know true happiness - or to have it snatched cruelly away and replaced by a series of well-intended misfortunes leading ultimately to a tragic death.

Hook, of course, cared little about any of it, just glad to be departing in search of his beloved ship.

Neal held hope that this meant they would return to Storybrooke to find his father cured - and without the possibility of relapse.

Emma just wanted to stop tilting at windmills and be happy, but she couldn't help wonder if it was too late to fix things the way she should have the first time, to be what Merlin had needed then - and what she was meant to have been if he hadn't interfered and sent her down a different path, one that led to her universal destruction.

Would she ever gain forgiveness for the things she'd done?

Something caught Emma's eye, and she slowed her horse peering down at a lone white tulip sprouting up through the fresh snow...

 _How odd,_ she thought, and wondered if that was some kind of magical sign...

* * *

AN: Sorry for leaving out how they got Gwen and exposed Arthur, but Camelot is boring me to fucking death here. Poor Merlin, dead again. Sorry if the matter of how Merlin and the Dark One are tied to the sword/dagger is wrong; that really confused the fuck out of me, and pretty sure the writers were just pulling it out of their asses consistency-wise. As I noted in Chapter 21, I had to go back and remove the line about the dagger from Chapter 20 as I realized the retcon error; if Emma didn't have the dagger with her, Rumple could have done the same spell on it to become an even more powerful Dark One somehow... and it seems the blades needed to be merged to actually trap and/or redirect the Dark One completely. Anyway, Arthur's line about baby fights is King Richard's from _Galavant_. Emma's conversation with Merlin: 1) post/137431819099/ive-always-had-a-problem-with-the-idea-of-h00ks on all the required "wall" related retcon for CS. 2) Crime and punishment is Carol Mendelsohn talking about _Game of Silence_ , MRJ's new project. 3) "that my actions had betrayed Him and that everything that had happened to me since was God punishing me" is Walter Bishop from the _Fringe_ episode "White Tulip". 4) _The Good Wife_ 's Ruth/Alicia conversation about fate and taking a different path with the late Will Gardner. 5) Merlin admitting to unintentionally distracting Emma from something of great importance that was ultimately the beginning of the end of the universe was inspired by the _Fringe_ episode "Peter" in which The Observer September intends to witness something that will save the universe, but his presence actually causes it to be missed by Walter Bishop, thus bringing about events that, no matter what September does to try and change things, lead to the destruction of universes instead... and ultimately his death. **(Poor Merlin. The black guy even gets whitewashed in death with a "white" tulip!)**

Next up: Flashback to the goings on in Storybrooke as three storylines are about to collide in an awful fanfiction of a fanfiction!


	41. Authors Suck

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: I completely forgot to award you credit for getting the answer to 42 in Chapter 37/22. It is the answer to everything... but more than just the Hitchhiker's Guide, it was also a reference to Fox Mulder's apartment number (which was itself an homage to HG), since I had used to _X-Files_ references and dialogue in this story. It would have been more fitting if it had been in Chapter 42, but oh well!**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE**

 **AUTHORS SUCK**

 **(12 hours back in time from Camelot due to the offset frequencies of the two worlds or some similar bullshit...)**

While Emma was chatting with Merlin under a light dusting of snow in a field of frozen fuck flowers, Storybrooke was in the midst of a "Code Frozen", a blizzard that had come up like a monster nor'easter shortly after the residents had grumbled their way home from the town hall.

"Code Frozen" wasn't actually a thing, just something Snow White made up in her last emergency alert broadcast before the power went out again.

A quasi-Red Cross-like shelter had been set up at the Convent by the nuns to provide magically-conjured heat and hot food for those who couldn't fend for themselves - like the Merry Men and other latecomers to Storybrooke who'd never integrated into the town of limited housing options for unemployed persons with no money, education, or job skills relevant to this who lacked the looks and charismatic bullshit skills to mooch off of gullible First Cursers.

Belle had taken it upon herself to help with the distribution of food and blankets and reading to the young children who were frightened by the howling wind and branches scratching against the stained glass windows.

Of course, Rumple had refused to join her, and she'd not really argued, knowing the Blue Fairy would not want her still land lord there and spend the entirety of the magical snow storm making that snooty 'bad smell' expression and insulting Rumple... as she had been doing to poor Tinkerbell who'd brought meals from Granny's and ended up stuck there when the storm started howling.

Belle just hoped that Rumple was keeping warm and heating up the soup she'd made. She knew the bad weather was making his leg ache more than usual.

* * *

"Please, please! I already told you everything I know!" August W. Booth howled in agony as his dildo-like nose blistered in the cracking fire.

"LIAR!"

"He's dangerous!"

"So is knowledge," Rumplestiltskin hissed. "And you have used it more than once to ruin the lives of others for your selfish gains. _You hurt my son_."

"I'm sorry!" August wailed. "It wasn't my fault! I was conned by the Darlings! I really thought I was helping Emma _and_ your son!"

His nose sprouted another inch and he whimpered, throwing a desperate look at his other captor. "Please... please tell him to let me go! Help me!"

"Like you told the cops to let my mom go because you set her up?" scoffed Henry. "Like you helped her _not_ be able to keep me by taking her twenty grand? Or how about you helped me with Operation Cobra - but all you really were doing was using me as a pawn so you could trick my grandfather into fixing your petrified condition that you _earned_ by being a lying, stealing, no-good manwhore!? At least as a piece of firewood you're actually useful!"

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" August gave one last cry of agony before passing out, the chair to which he was bound toppling sideways to the floor, his dildo-like nose black and smoking.

"Douche," remarked Henry with a roll of his eyes, to which Rumplestiltskin smiled.

"You have quite an aptitude for this, Henry. I'm sure your mothers and father would be quite appalled, of course..."

The teen shrugged. "Eh, I've got a bit of evil DNA. Might as well embrace it and channel it for good rather than fight it and end up having a mental breakdown and going full psycho like my mom... or repressing it and ending up a basketcase like my other mom."

"Indeed," agreed Rumple and he poked Booth with his cane. "He was poorly written anyway. Now, we just have to turn the key..."

"You really think that's a good idea?"

"I think we cannot count on your parents and that diseased pirate to free Merlin and dispatch of the Darkness before I have no choice but to attempt using the hat on myself. And if that fails, then this ice witch will be the least of this town's problems. Or... she'll become an even bigger problem if the Dark One chooses her."

They had hoped to be able to use a crystal ball to keep tabs on the "away party", but once they were captured and taken into Camelot, Excalibur's dark magic prevented any magic from accessing it. Well, _perhaps_ the Dagger might have been able to penetrate it, but _someone_ had bait-and-switched his own bait-and-switch. Rumple wasn't sure if she should be impressed by his son's sneakiness or insulted at his lack of faith. Regardless, it was in another world, so they were left to come up with contingency plans. And even though Henry had reminded him that Emma and Snow had succeeded against his odds that other time in the Enchanted Forest, that was also when Emma wasn't a dark-hearted hoe tainted by pirate stink and Snow was with her and helpful instead of being this down's dumbshit mayor who just kept making things worse.

No, he had no little faith in Emma Swan, none in the pirate, and to be honest, after his son got conned by a talking candlestick... well... Rumple just couldn't count on anyone else to have the brains to save his life _and_ theirs.

The best thing they could do was work on Plan B... or was it now Plan C? Regardless, using The Author's magical world-altering ability was a last ditch manner of containing the Dark One, at least temporarily, by writing a different story that transferred and imprisoned the Darkness in someone who was not being killed by it _yet_. Of course, attempting to use any magic to alter the Dark One wouldn't hold forever, and, presumably, neither Henry nor Emma would be affected by the "fanfiction" as Henry called it, so they would buy time to find a more permanent way to settle that score.

Really, this was a necessary contingency plan given the terrible track record of magic-related planning for all of those involved in the quest for the unHoly Grail.

Together Grandfather and Grandson moved to the cabin's small table where a sheet of paper with a door drawn on it sat beside a small key. Henry had found both in the glovebox of the Bug, stuffed in between a stack of roadmaps. His parents really sucked at hiding things.

Taking a deep breath, Henry inserted the key into the lock. There was a golden glow...

And then a weasely-looking man was standing opposite them. He appeared shocked, then afraid, then made a run for the door and pulled it open - only to run face-first into four feet of snow.

"Damn it!" cursed Isaac.

"Sit," said Rumple, using magic to force The Author into the other chair. "We may require your services in the near future."

"What makes you think I'd help you, Dark One?" scoffed Isaac.

"You're greedy and arrogant and looking for revenge against your former employer. To achieve that, you need a book of a certain parchment, a particular quill, and special ink, all of which only _I_ can provide. All you have to do is, if it comes to it, write a story in which I defeated the Dark One with Excalibur and all is well. You can even write it, for the most part, however you like."

"Why would you give me that leeway?"

"Because the alternative is the Dark One is unleashed when I soon expire and it destroys everyone and everything. _That_ or the attempt to retrieve Excalibur fails and even worse, that insane king you helped unleashes The Underworld on our town.

"I'm sure everyone here would rather have a fraudulent happy ending than a massacre."

"Fine," agreed Isaac. "You have a deal. Can I at least get something to eat?"

"How about," a new voice offered and they all turned to find Ingrid standing just inside the now cleared snow drift, "some ice cream?"

Before any of the men could react, a blast of ice shards flew toward them like bullets. Rumple had only a split second to use his magic to stop the ice daggers from impaling himself and Henry - and that split second, the Snow Queen vanished with The Author.

Henry and Rumple exchanged a look and a groan of, "Oh, farts."

On the floor, August regained consciousness and whimpered, "I think I need medical attention."

"Oh, shut up and put some ice on it!" snapped the Dark One.

* * *

AN: Nothing good can come of this!

Next up: One step forward, two steps back in the Enchanted Forest.


	42. The Forest of Coincidences

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN**

 **THE FOREST OF COINCIDENCES**

 _How odd, she thought, and wondered if that was some kind of magical sign..._

And then Hook's steed farted a blast so noxious Emma nearly fell out of her saddle.

"I swear to God, Hook," she seethed, "if you fed the mangy beast crab puffs..."

"He is not mangy!" Hook shot back. "His shaggy coat is particular to the breed!"

"Unlike you. Good thing it's overcast. If the sun was out, I'd be blinded by the glare off your bald spot!" sniggered Neal.

"I do not have a bald spot!" Hook howled, reaching up to reposition his hair. "It's _thinning_."

Emma sighed, growing seriously tired of the subject of Hook's _balding_ , and wondered if she could just run him through with a regular sword and leave his body to the wolves. Neal probably wouldn't object. They could say Hook died heroically... or tragically... or comically. It's not like anyone would really care.

But then again, they needed the _Jolly Roger_ to get home - or at least the people who were probably on it - so she might as well let Blackbeard take care of the messy business and then it wouldn't be on her soul.

The horse let out another fart and Emma nudged hers forward so she could reach over and smack Hook upside his balding heading.

"Owe!"

"You have first watch tonight."

"You didn't have to hit me, wench!"

"Don't call your family relations 'wench', asshole."

"I am officially disinheriting you!" Hook huffed, nudging his horse to pick up the pace into the snow covered trees. "You'll get none of my doubloons, jewels, or wardrobe of fancy frocks."

"Like I want the doubloons you stole, the jewels you murdered for, and the gowns of the women you raped!"

"Plus, he dresses up in them sometimes," offered Neal.

"What!?" Hook sputtered. "That's a lie!"

Neal snorted. "It is not. I saw you, when I was a kid. And then, you know, after I was dead, sometimes you'd say you were going out for a sail to feel pirate-y, but then you'd weigh anchor off the coast and dress up in ballgowns and tiaras."

"Oh my God, _you're a drag queen!?_ " Emma exclaimed.

"I was stuck in Neverland without female companionship for a long time!" Hook defended. "Pan only ever gave me leave long enough to get supplies and shag a trollop at the docks. I never got to crash any balls or seduce any noblewomen the way I used too!"

Emma made a disgusted face. "So what happened at Midas' engagement party was you reliving one of your sick rape schemes? If I hadn't gotten thrown in the dungeon after my mother stole my father's ring, would you have gotten me drunk on champagne and shagged me in the ass in the broom closet?"

"I have no idea what party you are talking about," Hook huffed. "But it would have been a pantry, not a broom closet."

"Yeah, I think you've developed an eating disorder," said Neal.

"Well, _someone_ left my bottomless flask in Camelot and _someone_ ," he glared at Emma, "won't use magic to retrieve it for me."

"And _someone_ needs to go to Alcoholic's Anonymous when we get back home."

"Whenever _that_ is," grumbled Hook. "How far is the-"

A sudden rustling sound drew their attention, a snowy but also orange shape appearing just at the treeline. Hook let out a girlie cry, grabbed a satchel from his saddle and hurled it with surprising near-deadly accuracy at the shape which let out a yelp and crumpled to the snow.

They dismounted to find the 'threat' was a redheaded woman in a white rabbit fur cloak with a quiver of arrows on her back. She now had a very bloody nose and was very unconscious.

"What the hell was that, man?" Neal asked the pale pirate. "Also, what was in that, your gallon of guyliner and magic hair shit?"

"I thought it was another one of those talking snowmen!" said Hook. "I mistook the bow and arrow for its freakish stick arms. And it's silverware," he amended, picking up a few pieces of cutlery that had fallen out of the bag.

"You stole silverware?"

"I'm quite certain I already mentioned that. The Dark Castle was fully pillaged and plundered by Robin Hood, so how else are we going to pay for passage aboard a ship if necessary? Did either of you think of that?"

"Okay, so syphilis hasn't killed all of your brain cells yet," admitted Emma as she checked Merida's pulse, "and she does have quite a carrot top. I mean, literally like Carrot Top. It's unnatural. Creepy, really."

"You suppose it has magical hair restorative powers?"

"Probably," considered Emma, "it would just make you talk in an even less intelligible accent and threaten to punch people in the face even more often. I had the displeasure of meeting her in that other timeline. Sometimes I wonder if God hates Scottish people."

"Wait," Neal interjected, "my father has a Scottish acce... oh, I see what you mean."

"Wait, so we're just going to leave her?" asked Hook, bewildered when Emma left the woman to get back on her horse. "That's not very heroic. I mean, not that I care or anything, but I thought you were attempting to be less of an 'asshole' than you apparently were in this other life in which you betrayed even your closest kin for sexual pleasures and such."

Emma glowered at the "sexual pleasures" comment, then argued, "It may not be heroic, but it's eliminating a pointless and distracting detour that I'm sure Mulan can handle and then leave Merida and her people to whatever horrible misrepresentation of Scottish history and culture this world has. The last thing we need is to be pulled into a stupid clan war between a bunch of gingers."

"Isn't it kinda racist... or something calling them 'gingers' isn't it?" Neal pointed out.

"This world is knda racist. I'm just blending," Emma defended, then got back to the original subject, "How far is the Dark Castle from here, anyway?"

"According to that sign," pointed Hook with an uneasy expression, "One Day's Ride"

There was, indeed, a wooden sign on the tree next to where Merida was bleeding in the snow.

"That seems awfully coincidental," considered Emma, amending, "And I don't remember seeing that a moment ago."

Neal looked between the two of them and rolled his eyes. "Christ, you two were the shittiest Dark Ones that ever existed. Anyone who wants to make a deal with the Dark One is guided by magic to his - or her - doorstep. How do you seriously not know that?"

Emma gave him an annoyed look. "Okay, I get it, I was a bad Dark One. But at least I wasn't the _worst_ Dark One. I mean, I _knew_ when I was the Dark One."

" _That didn't happen!_ " Hook snapped. "Both of you wankers stop bringing up stuff that didn't happen. I was never the Dark One, and I'm sure there would have been a very plausible explanation for how I would not know that I was if it had been."

"Eh... not really," said Emma.

"Yeah, it was pretty much glossed over 'Fuck the details, who cares, Merlin style'. Not the best way to honor him, what with you murdering him, really," said Neal with a smirk.

"I hate you both," growled Hook. "Also, why would that sign invite us to steal from the Dark One? _That_ is suspicious."

"We're not stealing. He already gave permission. Besides, blood magic should let me inside. It did last time."

"And the Vault with no door? How are you planning to work those 'tumblers', Nealfire?"

Neal glared at Emma. "When exactly did you tell him about that? And why does it sound so sexual?"

"We were arguing about my chaining him to the radiator in your basement. It had nothing to do with that. And he makes _everything_ sound sexual, Neal."

"Nothing to do with what?" asked Hook. "Were there handcuffs involved? Was it kinky?"

"NO!" they shouted together.

"Can one of you just answer the question already?" huffed Hook. "I'd rather not attempt to steal from some magically warded safe and end up trapped in it for all of eternity."

"It'll be fine," assured Neal. "We'll figure it out when we get there. Don't worry about it. S'not important."

"How is it _not_ important?" huffed Hook.

"It's how details are handled in this world. I'm just blending," quipped Neal.

* * *

When they got there, the Dark Castle was just as Neal remembered it... if a bit more dusty. Thankfully, combining blood magic with Emma using her magic and memory of the inside of the Vault, they were able to get inside and retrieve the urn using one of those 'self-love magic handshakes' (which is _not_ a euphemism for masturbation, and Emma punched Hook in the face for the suggestion).

"Sure this isn't your grandma's ashes?" asked Hook after they'd returned to the sitting room with the urn.

"Sure that stuff you're pocketing is really hair tonic and not something bewitched to look like what you most desire and will really make your dick fall off?" countered Neal.

Emma rolled her eyes at them, and before either could protest, opened the top of the urn.

There was a gust of blue and white sparkles, and then Elsa appeared in her blue and white sparkly dress that she had somehow inexplicably made with magic that seemed otherwise confined to snow, ice... and shrinking ships.

"Who are you?" Elsa demanded while looking around, recognizing the surroundings. "This is the Dark One's-"

Suddenly, the ground shook, there was a bright flash of light-

And Emma found herself in a bed she didn't recognize, in a frilly nightgown, and being accosted by a grinning Elsa.

"Helga, get up! It's Ingrid's birthday!"

Emma blinked at the other woman and then silently swore.

 _I am going to kill Rumplestiltskin. And Henry. This has Henry's meddling, Apollo Bar chocolate covered finger prints all over it!_

She sighed and shook her head, "Oh, farts."

* * *

AN: And so Isaac's fanfiction begins. I intend this "adventure" to be short with more exposition than character interaction to just get through the disastrous literary mess. The chapter title, of course, is from _Galavant._ (I had to throw in some Merida-bashing, because, come on, what a blatant and plot-useless product placement was that character?)

Next up: A disastrous literary mess.


	43. Bad Fic

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT**

 **BAD FIC**

One minute Henry was in the pawn shop with his grandfather trying to determine the whereabouts of the Snow Queen... and the next Rumplestiltskin had vanished along with the blizzard and everyone in town.

Exactly why Isaac would write everyone away without erasing the town was a mystery... though, as Henry thought about it on the very illegal drive out of Storybrooke, the creepy scribe probably wanted to do some sort of "Harry Potter World" type thing and turn the town into a theme park where people could take selfies in his bedroom.

Henry parked the Mercedes rather haphazardly in the parking lot of some fancy hotel with a banner advertising this douchebag's latest masterpiece, and pushed through crowds of fans who made _Twilight_ stans look like academic NPR types until he'd reached their false god.

Isaac's expression fell. "Oh, it's you."

* * *

The Merry Men were a merry group of men. Okay, that sounded stupid and redundant, and quite honestly they were not remotely merry. They lived in the forest barely getting by after all. Plus, winter was coming, which meant the late Queen Eva's army of ice zombies that had been banished to the North beyond Queen Ingrid's ice wall would be trying to come down and kill them, so... that always sucked.

There had been a time when they'd aspired to steal from the rich and give to the poor, but it was rather difficult to get through the armed guards and magic spells that the rich used... and even if they did, other than stealing food, there wasn't much they could give away to the poor that wouldn't send up a red flag at the nearest pawn shop and get the people they'd wanted to help thrown in the Evil Witch Queen Snow White's dungeon.

It was, Neal of House Cassidy had to admit, a pretty shitty existence. And he'd been trapped in Neverland for like an eternity being tortured by Peter Pan! Of course, escaping there was worth just about anything, but he'd been hoping to get to _another_ world, not the one he'd voluntarily left behind because his family had been killed in the Ogre Wars and he was poor and uneducated and would have ended up in the child slave trade.

As a young man, he'd gotten a job at a tavern owned by Robin of Locksley... who'd seemed to be a good man but turned out to be a spy for Snow White, selling out any dissenters - including his own wife.

Neal had fled with some of the others, formed up a posse of sorts with a vigilante life. They stuck it to the rich who were leaving the poor to rot, just as they had back in The Frontlands. Or, at least, they tried to. But Locksley was now Sheriff, after Snow ripped out the heart of the previous Sheriff for his failure to bring in her enemy Regina, and he was hunting traitors down with the Queen's guards.

Oh, there was a day when they might have been able to get help from the Dark One - for a price - but Rumplestiltskin was locked up by Snow White so he could no longer facilitate deals with her enemies - particularly, again, Regina.

That was something of a sordid soap opera mess, Neal considered as he whittled another arrow by the campfire.

Snow White was Regina's stepdaughter, but less than ten years separated them in age. Neal didn't know the full details and exactly who were the villains in the tale (perhaps both), but the two had met as respective child and teenager, Regina was married off unwillingly to King Leopold after Queen Eva's death, and Snow White, it seemed, didn't like her father paying attention to the pretty young woman - not that Regina had liked it either, apparently - and convinced Leopold that Regina had poisoned Eva and set up the whole thing to marry him with a plan to kill him and usurp his thrown.

Naturally, the King had thrown his wife in the dungeon... and within a year suffered a massive heart attack, leaving Snow White, barely eighteen, in charge of everything west of Sherwood Forest. Oh, and Snow White may or may not have killed Regina's father at some point in the whole mess.

Regardless, Snow White then took a lover, the once brave and honorably Prince James that rumor had it was really his evil twin David who orchestrated his death in a duel making some sort of deal with the miserly King Midas, and the two laid siege over the continent.

King George the Good was the first to fall, betrayed by his house fairy godmother who'd somehow been swayed into Snow's employ; some believed the Blue Fairy was playing all sides of this little war, anything to keep selling magic and enslaving Dwarves.

Again, regardless, Regina had ever since been a prisoner of Snow White, locked up in her father's mountainside fortress castle in an inhospitable icy wasteland while she and Prince James ruled and carried out their conquests from George's old castle where the Dark One was alleged to be still be locked up. Of course, rumor also had it that the Dark One was dying, so whatever magic he had may or may not have been compelled to use to imprison Regina all those years ago might be weakening... and allow anyone to enter the castle and pillage all of its riches (and, perhaps, find some secret to bring down Snow White).

Of course, Snow White and Prince James were not the only ones involved in this tyranny. Snow White was really just a steward for her cousins, a triumvirate of ice witches that ruled the continent across the eastern sea... though rumor had it that their governance was not truly equal and Queen Ingrid had her younger sisters under some spell acquired from the Dark One.

The people over there apparently called this land "Misthaven" for the thick fog that choked the coast, that made it easy for pirates to pillage and plunder seaside towns. Few people here had ever been to the _naturally_ snowy land across the ocean or the hotter and more tropical kingdoms beyond that Ingrid and her sisters had yet to turn into snowy wastelands. Neal had once met a fierce pirate named Mulan from Shangri-la, a land even beyond the kingdom of Arendelle, but he had never met anyone from Arendelle; it was said that "The Snow Queen" had put an ice wall around the kingdom proper that no one could get through without magic.

It was also said that Snow White resented not being able to call herself The Snow Queen when it was her mother, Ingrid's aunt, who'd created the frozen zombie army that Queen Cora built the ice wall to keep out before Snow banished her to Wonderland.

Really, there were more crazy bitches with ice magic here than that show _Zoom_ had super-powered speedsters.

He kind of missed TV.

That was the only good thing about an adventure to Victorian London World... several centuries after he'd last been there, a pit-stop on his way to Neverland. They'd been trying to steal some technology that might help against the zombies and Snow White... a job that went spare when the White Rabbit turned out to be a traitor working for Alice who got them locked up in a metal institution. If it wasn't for Jafar's magic staff, they'd have been stuck there being given "shock therapy" still. Any longer and they probably would have needed those rock trolls to restore their memories... though everyone said those things were pure evil, of course, and took your soul in exchange for memories.

Anyway, the Merry Men had tried to get into Snow's old castle once before in a roundabout way of trying to free Regina's mother Cora from Wonderland, where Snow had sent the kindly old woman, but the Mad Hatter and Knave of Hearts had betrayed them.

There was a lot of betrayal going around with the whole Wonderland thing, to be honest. It wasn't their best run.

Thankfully, they were able to escape with the help of Bo Peep's magical crook, the means by which they'd discerned the true nature of this evil monarchy as well. In it they had a magical contraption that allowed them see - or sometimes only hear, depending on the distance - goings on in other lands, between their enemies.

Some days it also picked up catchy musical numbers from what seemed to be another magical land where the people were cursed to burst into song about their feelings. Here, people were more likely to burst into mass murder over their feelings.

Probably neither one was very healthy.

Magic was weird.

"OWE! LET ME GO!"

Neal turned and found Jafar - former sorcerer exiled from Agraba to Wonderland by the Sultan Aladdin and his murderous wife Jasmine - holding a kid in odd clothes by the scruff of his neck.

"I found him snooping in the bushes," said Jafar. "He said he was looking for _Baelfire_."

That gave Neal a start. Outside of the Merry Men _no one_ knew his birth name. He had put that moniker to rest a long time ago. Because, come on, it was a really stupid name. The only thing worse was his _middle_ name. Baelfire _Cosmo_ Cassidy! It was just _cruel_.

Neal approached the kid with a weird deja vu feeling. The Mad Hatter - before he betrayed them - used to say that deja vu was real, that you felt like you'd been somewhere or met someone before, because in an alternate parallel universe where time was different or you made different choices that led to slightly different outcomes, you _had_. His father used to say that it was the universe's way of telling you that you were on the right path. Of course, the first option came from an insane traitor and the second from a man who happily walked into battle in a genocidal war that ultimately wiped out most of The Frontlands, so there was nothing honorable about it.

"How do you know my name?" Neal demanded after shaking off the feeling.

"Duh," said the boy, " _I'm your son_."

* * *

"... Oh, and King Midas' daughter has finally set a date for the wedding," reported Court Advisor Archibald Cricket, standing before a severely dressed Snow White who sat upon her throne in a pose of boredom.

"Took her long enough. James only saved her 'true love', what, two years ago?" scoffed the Queen. "I was beginning to think we'd never see dividends for that agreement."

"To be fair, Your Majesty," Archibald reminded, "there was an agreed upon marriage contract for your children, and after-"

" _I am well aware, Cricket_ ," snapped Snow White. "Anyway, I've held up my end. Assuming Abigail isn't blessed with all sons, it's finalized."

From a spot beside the throne, looking even more bored, the Prince Consort uttered, "When is this ghastly gilded affair going to take place?"

"A month from Saturday," reported Archibald. "The bride and groom have registered with Fantastic Taxidermy Beasts and guests are encouraged to bring their trophy kills to be stuffed and mounted for later gilding by King Midas. The more exotic the better."

"I suppose you'll have to slay another dragon, dear," said Snow White to which her husband shrugged.

"Fine, whatever. I'm going to go rough up some villagers with Locksley," he declared. "Can't let them get too complacent."

Prince James gave his Queen a quick kiss on the corner of her mouth and a cheerful, "I'll see you for dinner, Shmoopiekins."

"Don't be late, Honeymuffin. And try to get all of your blood lust out of your system before dinner. It's getting quite hard to find new chefs."

As the Prince Consort headed off, Snow White inquired of her adviser, "Is that all, Cricket?"

"Erm, no, Your Majesty. The people of East Riverton are complaining about the stench from the corpses in West Riverton. Perhaps you could cast a freezing spell on the town?"

"I could, but I don't particularly feel like being generous with my magic today." Snow White snapped her fingers at one of the guards. "You, whatever your name is-"

"Alexander."

"Whatever. Go tell my husband to kill everyone in East Riverton."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Smiling with satisfaction, the Queen proclaimed, "That should kill two birds with one stone. Speaking of which, has the cooking staff killed those swans yet? Their trumpeting every morning is cutting into my beauty sleep."

"I'll inquire about your at once, Your Majesty," said Archibald with a bow before skittering off like the bug he so often turned into to spy for his monarch.

Growing bored with sitting on her fancy thrown, Snow White retreated in the direction of her bed chamber to consider her selection of ball gowns for Abigail's wedding.

She really did love weddings. Weddings and wars. If she hadn't been born royal, surely her calling would have been to combine the age old arts of wedding planning and weapons dealing. Fortunately, she was born a princess and so she didn't have to work to survive in this patriarchal society. She just had to kill lots of people and instill abject terror to ensure she wasn't toppled by some chauvinist pig tyrant.

Thankfully, while her "prince" was a chauvinist pig, he was content to be her field marshal, his thirst for blood greater than a thirst for power.

At first, she'd been reluctant to pursue a relationship with a man she discovered was an impostor, born of peasant blood, but when she'd heard about his past adventures, like slaughtering that little tart tax collector Bo Peep's family after using them in his faux rebellion to usurp his brother's place and kill King George... well, Snow had known the shepherd had a place at her side.

That their wartime alliance became something more, well, that was unexpected. But no one ever claimed true love was just for heroes, Snow considered with a smirk, just before realizing that lost in her musings she'd turned the wrong direction down the hall, come to stand in front of a locked door.

Furious with herself, the Queen stomped back the other way to her quarters and yanked open the doors to her closet.

"Are you quite well, Your Majesty?"

Snow White glared at Johanna who considered her from inside the mirror on the vanity. "I am fine. And you are dead."

"I'm well aware as it was you who killed me."

"Go away!" snapped Snow.

"I can't go away if I am in your mind, Your Majesty."

In a furry, Snow grabbed a large candlestick and hurled it at the 'ghost' who vaporized as it impacted the mirror with a crash.

When later James - who was really David - found his wife crying on the bedroom floor, he cursed the day he ever trusted that ice merchant from Arendelle.

* * *

AN: If heroes and villains are swapped in this story, does that mean original good guy Rumple here was on the Duke's side and basically a FTL Nazi? I've wondered why Henry took the Mercedes and not the Bug, but then after the fiasco with David's truck, maybe he was smart enough to realize that he doesn't know how to drive stick? (I just had to get a Game of Thrones joke in there.)

Next up: Across the Middle Sea... or whatever the fuck the FTL ocean is called.


	44. The Weird Sisters

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: Isaac's story will be weird, because it's badly written! Yes, Neal did see television in Victorian London. I only watched the pilot of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, but it seemed to be the same Victorian London World that Neal had been to 200 years later (and in this fake story he traveled to Alice's time with the Merry Men). Alice's world/time period had technology but was Victorian in the way that Earth-2 on The Flash has technology but the overall design of the world is stuck in the pre-WWII Art Deco period. The singing world is actually a referenece to Galavant (like the Wormwood thing!), but I do see it as suffering a curse like on Buffy, which was actually my thought to explain it if I ever wrote a crossover with Galavant. Some readers wanted "Cosmo" for Baby Neal's name after I made the Seinfeld reference as a possibility, so I felt obliged to give to a Neal. The Mad Hatter's philosophy is based on one of several theories about deja vu from Fringe.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE**

 **THE WEIRD SISTERS**

"My _what_?" sputtered Neal.

"Your son," Henry repeated.

"That's impossible. You can't possibly be my son."

Henry rolled his eyes. "Well, I am."

"Well, you were misinformed," Neal shot back. "I mean, I had a pretty long dry spell after Tinkerbell. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but what with being on the run from Snow White..."

" _You had sex with Tinkerbell_!?" Henry sputtered, horrified.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," said Neal, bewildered. "She's a very hot and naughty fairy. And not very many guys can say they've shagged a fairy, what with the usual anatomical incompatibilities."

"It's true," nodded Bo Peep. "Fairies might be meddling little cunts, but they don't have actual cunts unless their wings are taken. They're like those Barbie Dolls the Hatter collected down there!"

"Should have known better than to trust a man who played with girlie dolls that don't have girlie parts," huffed Nottingham.

" _You were fourteen_!" exclaimed Henry.

"I know, right!" Neal beamed and high-fived the other Merry Men.

"Dude, why is everyone in my family either being raped or a rapist or both!" moaned Henry dejected. "I am so going to need more therapy!"

"Why would you want shock treatment?" asked Bo Peep.

"I think he means the non-torture kind of therapy," said Jafar.

"Is there really such a thing?"

"Well, that's debatable."

"Never mind," sighed Henry. "Look you may not remember it, but you definitely shagged my mom at least once or I wouldn't exist. Granted, it might have been just the once given how personal she took the whole thing with Michael Tillman banging Ava and Nicholas mom just the one time and then skipping town, but you did live in a car for like... between a couple of weeks up to maybe a year, depending on how old my mom was you met, but either way, at least in Oregon it was probably only misdemeanor sexual abuse of a minor rather than statutory rape, and, to be fair, Oregon state law is seriously fucked up about that. I mean, even if both the guy and the girl are seventeen, they can both be prosecuted or something. Or that's what I read online, anyway."

"That's... all a very interesting story, young man," said Nottingham. "Clearly you are an aspiring con artist trying to avoid child enslavement. I can't blame you. The Blue Fairy runs quite a horrific child trafficking ring."

Henry blinked, shocked. "Wait, the Blue Fairy enslaves kids?" Then he shook his head. "You know, that wouldn't actually surprise me, actually."

"Oh, it's quite true," sighed Neal. "She employed Peter Pan to recruit a whole human division of her cartel to cull children from many different worlds. Fairies are not of the mortal realms, but they require human emotion to keep their own kingdoms from dying. The good fairies use laughter and joy. The bad fairies use tears and fear. And, well, with Snow White's reign of terror upon the Enchanted Forest, there's just not a lot of happy children, and the Blue Fairy is an opportunist who takes her business where the market dictates."

"Of course, Pan is rumored to be dead," piped up Peep. "He overstepped his authority and now the slave trafficking ring's base of operations has relocated from Neverland, presumably, to Camelot. And if there's any place you want to go less than Neverland or Wonderland _it's Camelot_."

"Yes, it is a silly place," agreed Nottingham. "Also, extremely racist. And the pollen count is just crazy for allergies. Poor Artie, he always did have terrible allergies."

They all nodded at this. Arthur had been imprisoned after being betrayed by his wife and closest knight Lancelot who then killed all the white people. Needless to say, Camelot had a very small population, and white people were terrified to go there, which made it the perfect place for the Blue Fairy to set up her business... and, yes, there was something very wrong about Lancelot enabling the Dwarf and child slave trade considering the historical enslavement of his ancestors who were brought to his world by Snow White's ancestors who overthrew the Duke of the Frontlands, had the Ogres kill Neal's people, and then turned the place into cotton fields for the making of fancy ballgowns and castle linens.

But the people of Camelot chose not to notice any of that, presumably because of the toxic Middlemist flowers that were even worse than Neverland Pixie Dust Vine. If only Arthur hadn't taken a wrong turn on that scouting run and fallen in love with that evil queen...

"That's great," said Henry, growing frustrated with how stupidly these people were written, "but I really _am_ Neal's son and I really _do_ need help."

Before Neal could object again to the crazy story of being this kid's son, a man wearing crazy welding goggles burst into the clearing.

"Merlin's balls, Horrible!" gasped Peep, "you trying to give us a heart attack!?"

"Don't call me that!" Victor Frankenstein growled, "and _The Prince_ is here!"

There was no time to react to that _horrible_ news as Prince James, Robin of Locksley, and a band of very _not_ merry but quite bloodthirsty men poured out from behind the trees to surround the band of thieves.

Neal groaned, "Oh-"

"Farts," concluded Henry.

* * *

After a happy slaughtering of East Riverton, James-Who-Was-Really-David and Locksley had a bonus of apprehending Nottingham and the Merry Men. It was a boon to bring the Queen, who was in a fowl mood after having something as embarrassing as an emotional breakdown, something villainous monarchs were _not_ allowed.

Honestly, James-Who-Was-Really-David, was often rather exasperated with his wife's emotionally bipolar moodiness and if he'd realized how unpredictable she could be when they met, he might have avoided falling in love with her. _But she was just skinny and mean._ It just blinded him to her character flaws, like crying, and murdering blood relatives.

Of course, James-Who-Was-Really-David had also killed his twin brother, but that was different: the douchebag deserved it. Snow White was just a little bit insane with her motivations for murdering family members, even before the whole "Snow Queen" thing.

"I don't want to talk about the Snow Queen thing," Snow huffed, jabbing the meat fork at the taxidermist's swan, which really did showcase the talents of Fantastic Taxidermy Beasts.

"Honeymuffin," sighed James-Who-Was-Really-David at the other end of the ridiculously long table, "we have to talk about it."

" _What? I can't hear you_."

" _I said we have to talk about it_."

" _No, we don't!_ "

 _"I think you have us dine at this absurdly long table just so we can't talk about anything!"_

 _"I think I am going to my room!"_

Snow White threw her napkin down and stormed off, demanding the rest of her dinner in bed.

James-Who-Was-Really-David sighed again and rubbed his temples. Her moods had only gotten more volatile since her last pregnancy, which was to be expected, of course, both with the hormones and just being reminded of Emma.

Poor Emma.

She would be walking and talking now, learning to insult servants and jab the kitchen staff with butter knives!

Well, okay, she _was_ walking and talking and doing a lot worse than that, but it wasn't the same. That evil ice witch had taken their baby, magically aged her and brainwashed her and taught her how to inspire fear in the hearts of her enemies - and her subjects.

 _That was supposed to be their job!_

 _They_ were supposed to be the ones teaching Emma those things, not being ordered around by their own daughter who didn't know that she was their daughter and believed she was the sister of a complete lunatic who'd encased her own kingdom in a wall of ice.

James-Who-Was-Really-David poked at his roast swan. He _really_ should not have trusted Kristoff. Or that little bitch Anna. But she was just so _skinny and mean_ , helping him murder Bo Peep's family and all for justice! It was all a con, though, a brilliant ruse to infiltrate the Enchanted Forest and turn it into a colony of the Arendelle Empire and usurp any real power play that Snow had by taking their child to ensure they did whatever they were told and sent their collected taxes and food that couldn't grow in Arendelle's inhospitable wasteland across the sea, leaving their people impoverished... and if they ever did revolt, Snow as required to freeze them out of their homes.

Not that there weren't people who needing freezing out of their homes, but his own province, _his own mother_ , had been murdered by Ingrid when they were mostly innocent people who _loved him_. Of course, the survivors didn't love him, which just created problems. He and Snow could have run a benevolent dictatorship, cleaning up the financial messes and food shortage problems that George, Midas, and the rest had gotten them into, but their grand plans were destroyed the day Emma was taken, and ever since then Snow had been succumbing more and more to the grief _and_ the dark ice magic Ingrid channeled into her through that damned urn.

His wife was, quite simply, _going mad_.

And there was nothing they could do about it. Sure, they had Rumplestiltskin in their dungeon, but _she_ had Merlin's Apprentice, some old dude who could cross worlds and was the only being the Dark One feared... something they hadn't known at the time they captured Rumplestiltskin in the hopes that he could protect them from Ingrid's crazy prophesy.

He couldn't.

Oh, they'd tried building a wardrobe, but instead of whisking Emma off to another land, Ingrid hijacked it using that wizard's wardrobe, stepped through, grabbed Emma, and went back to her kingdom.

They'd tried to get Emma back. Even hired that also lunatic Mad Hatter to use his hat to get her, but the memory stone they stole that was supposed to cure her of her cursed memories got broken when Anna betrayed them, their wardrobe was burned to ashes, and Emma fled back to Arendelle and her "real family".

* * *

Anna paced her dungeon cell while Kristoff slept nearby.

Oh, what fools they'd been! She'd helped Ingrid, believing she just wanted to help find Elsa after her sister ran off and built that crazy ice palace. She'd gone all the way to Misthaven to seek out the Dark One. All she succeeded in doing was helping her aunt discover the weaknesses of her enemies that she manipulated into allies.

All she had wanted was to find some prophesied child, who hadn't even been conceived yet.

As soon she realized the child was Snow White's, Ingrid's beneficence had done a 180. She'd thrown Anna and Kristoff in the dungeon, brainwashed Elsa, and created an ice wall around Arendelle. From there it was a campaign of global conquest with her "sisters".

Anna had managed to escape once and get her back to the Enchanted Forest, but Ingrid had found and tricked Regina's half sister, and using her heart made her shapeshift into various people to trick Snow White and Prince James, including Anna herself.

Really, things had sucked. They'd always sucked.

But then, Anna had never been the upbeat optimistic sort. Really, it was a wonder a guy so clean and neat as Kristoff would be interested in a morose introvert like her!

Also, you know, that he wasn't gay.

The sound of footsteps outside the cell caused Anna turn away from gazing at her sleeping true love like a psycho and prepare for whatever horrible visitor she might have.

The horrible visitor turned out to be "Helga" and Anna glared at her.

"If you've come down here to taunt me again-"

"I've come here to break you out," said Emma.

"Are you that green-skinned witch bitch?" asked Anna, suspicious.

Emma's brows furrowed. "Zelena? She's dead."

"Prove it! Prove you're not Zelena being used by Ingrid to trick me into having a three way with Kristoff and a flying monkey again!"

"Ewe, and I thought sleeping with just Walsh was bad," shuddered Emma, wishing she could memory wipe that image. "Look, I can't prove that I'm not a shapeshifting psychopath, but I can get us out of Arendelle so we can free your sister."

"But my sister is _here_ ," reminded Anna.

"No, she isn't. This isn't real," sighed Emma. "I mean, it is here, but none of us are meant to be here like this. The Author, this guy who worked for The Apprentice and went rogue and was trapped in a magical book but somehow got out, probably because my son did something stupid, has now written us all into a fake story. This is basically a cursed play and we're stuck in roles with bad dialogue and worse costuming," she concluded with a gesture at her knockoff Scandinavian garb that included braids and for some reason lederhosen, which were technically Bavaerian.

"That's just the sort of lie Ingrid would have you tell m-"

Anna suddenly collapsed unconscious, knocked out by a wooden clog held by Kristoff.

"She's a sweet girl," he said, "but not very smart. Also, rather moody. But she makes up for it with sluttiness. This one time we were stuck in an ice cave with a reindeer..."

Kristoff trailed off then considered, "Hmm, I see your point about the bad dialogue. So, what's your plan for getting out of here?"

"I hadn't actually gotten that far," admitted Emma.

"Seriously?"

"What can I say? I'm not very smart, but I am moody. Also, according to my uncle, skanky. Don't get any ideas."

"Oh, my heart beats for only one slutty princess! No worries!"

* * *

AN: I've always just figured Neal lost his virginity to Tinkerbell. I see Snow and David here like Madalena and Gareth on _Galavant_. They are terrible people, but not evil people, and probably would have been okay benevolent dictators after they fell in love, if not for the theft of Emma and Snow being corrupted by dark magic. "Arthur" is obviously Farquaad, but in this story Isaac doesn't care and just made him think he was Arthur so there was no original King Arthur (who would have been the evil one here, of course). Anyone get the "Horrible" joke?

Next up: Another prison break.


	45. The Dark One Rises

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Answer to Chapter 29 Question: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY**

 **THE DARK ONE RISES**

"Look," insisted a very annoyed Henry, "I'm trying to tell you. _He_ is your son. _I_ am _his_ son. And we're all stuck in a bad rewrite of an already badly written reality."

"He doesn't look anything like me," huffed Rumplestiltskin from the cell across the dungeon catacomb.

"No one looks like you! You're covered in scales and have teeth like a troll!" said Neal.

"I do not have troll teeth! You take that back or I'll turn you into a snail!"

"I'd like to see you try, you impotent imp!"

Rumplestiltskin tried to magic jab at him with a claw-like finger, but the spark of magic rebounded off the bars and hit him in the face, resulting in a blob of slime.

" _Damn it!"_

"How the hell did a Dark One like you outlive the rest of 'em by centuries?" wondered Jafar.

"Says the fool who got betrayed by his brother and a street urchin and would have spent eternity telling idiots 'and you can't ask for infinite wishes' thanks to that evil realm-jumping hoe from another world if you hadn't been freed by some magical bullshit loophole."

"Unlike me," grumbled Gene. "I was freed by a tyrannical king in exchange for granting his wish to kill his wife who'd ruined his first love's life to get the throne. I thought I had it made as his adviser until their brat child got a bit older and trapped me in her mirror and forced me to help her plot to murder her stepmother. _Then_ I was freed by the Snow Queen so Snow White couldn't use me to spy on her, which was nice of her and all, accept that she then made up some bullshit story that I escaped somehow so Snow White has been hunting me ever since!"

"Yeah, that's a very sad story, _Gene_ ," huffed Victor. "At least you're from this plain of reality. I was dragged out of my world by Snow White to try and revive her dead mother. Is it my fault she came back a zombie who tried to kill everyone? I mean, isn't that what she did when she was alive and creating zombies? Why'd the little brat expect any different? And now I'm wanted for treason _and_ necrophilia! Not _necromancy_ , _necrophilia_. Everyone thinks I tried to shag Queen Eva's corpse!"

"Hey," huffed Peep, "at least your family wasn't slaughtered for no reason. I mean, all we did was collect taxes for the King. And he was a _good_ king. But no, that bastard shepherd was scheming to take over the kingdom and decided to use my family in his little con. I made mud pies with that asshole as a kid. _Mud pies_."

"Yes, well, I was betrayed by my best friend and lost my true love to him and then she tried to leave his abusive arse and return to me but was killed by Snow White for treason and now I am left having to raise that douchebag's marital rape spawn," said Nottingham, "so I win."

"Hey, where _is_ Roland?" wondered Neal.

"The bridge trolls were baby-sitting him for the night," said Anastasia in the corner of the cell, a loopy smile upon her face. "Oooo, I found a bug! Yum!"

Everyone grimaced as she munched on a cockroach. Yes, poor Ana, stepsister of the evil queen Ella who'd exiled her to Wonderland for being prettier, hadn't been right in the head since she came back from the dead and her true love left her to bang the help.

It wasn't entirely clear how this nefarious Belle character fit into the greater tale, but she somehow managed to show up and infiltrate the "adventures" of a lot of characters, not the least of which was getting a job working for the Dark One _and_ getting out of that deal.

"Hmm, if only humans were as trustworthy and compassionate as bridge trolls," said Peep and everyone nodded in agreement.

Henry smacked his forehead against the bars of the cell. Good grief, Isaac was the worst writer in the history of the written language, and he'd read that _My Immortal_ fanfiction!

"For the love of all things unholy!" Henry growled, "just use the damned scroll you have hidden behind that rock to vanish your cell bars already, Grandpa!"

Rumplestiltskin blinked at him and then his eyes lit. "Ohhhh! I completely forgot about that! Teehee!"

The Dark One scrounged around like Gollum looking for his "precious" and finally pulled out a scroll with "Emma" written on it. He blew a foul breath of bad porridge and maggots in the direction of the magical bars and they dissolved.

"Awesome! Now free us!"

"Why should I do any such thing?"

"Because I'm your grandson and you'd still be stuck in that cell if I hadn't remind you of how to get out of it!" Henry growled, then amended, "Also, before we got stuck in this story, we were doing some family bonding torturing this douchebag who really had it coming and didn't get to finish."

The Dark One considered this, then agreed, "I like your style, boy. I don't know that I believe this story of yours, but there's nothing worse than torturous interruptus."

Rumplestiltskin snapped his fingers and the others were free. "I suppose the rest of you can come as well," he said, "but no sitting on the furniture in those filthy rags!"

In a poof of purple they were all relocated to the Dark Castle where Belle let out a yelp and dropped the rose that was Gaston - a quite nice fellow, but she wasn't into nice guys.

"Rumplestiltskin, where have you been?" she griped, "and who are all of these filthy people?"

The Dark One shrugged. "In a dungeon for between two and twenty-eight years. I lost track of time and a bit of my sanity. This boy claims he's my grandson from a real reality as we are all stuck in a book, and that questionable fellow is my son who doesn't know that he is. Also, those two were once genies, that one's a mad scientist, that one's a slutty tax collector, that one's lost her mind completely, and... the rest of them didn't get around to boring me with their origin stories. Don't worry, they won't be staying long."

"Well, all right," agreed Belle, "because I had a very different dungeon scenario planned for tonight."

A collective "Ewwwwwwwwwwwwe" went around the room, followed by Nottingham looking ill as he croaked out, "Please don't tell me you tortured me in your _sex_ dungeon!"

"Okay, I won't," said Belle. "Now, make sure they take their shoes off, Rumple, and don't make me _make_ you."

Rumplestiltskin glowed. "You could have just summoned me out of Snow White's dungeon, _dearie_."

"Yes, I know, but you deserved to be punished for trying to trade me for a gauntlet," said Belle, "and I needed time to redecorate the castle without you bitching about it."

"I had wondered why it was now pink," said Nottingham.

"Hold on," Henry accused Belle, " _you're_ evil?"

"Evil is subjective. There's only power, which is knowledge, and those too weak to seek it."

"Okay, now it's just turning into a bad plagiarizing of _Harry Potter_!" groaned Henry.

"Oh, I met him once on a wizard exchange program," said Jafar. "He's very evil! You should hear what he did to this poor guy Tom Riddle. Also, he gave me an atomic wedgie and set my magic carpet on fire and framed me so everyone thought I was a terrorist when he was really the terrorist using his giant snake to murder little kids!"

"Wow, that's messed up," said Henry.

Belle interjected. "As messed up as a sterile werewolf having a child with a punk Mary Sue and both of them dying off page to leave a godson plot device for a boy wizard who named his kids after the asshole who treated him like crap for seven years, the manipulative old bastard who used little kids as chess pieces in a game of 'clean up my own mess in secret so I look like a hero', and his arrogant prick father and shallow bimbo mother - whom he basically married since his dumbfuck fangirl wife looks exactly like her. But, hey, she grew bigger tits at sixteen then the brilliant bookworm who always stood by him and clearly loved him, but since he had the hots for Ginger Tits married the skanks low-IQ'd bigot with jealousy and anger management issues brother who treated her like a trophy or trash depending on how much or little his ego was stroked in any given chapter - all so the story could end with one big happy dysfunctional family of indoctrinated-into-stupid-traditions family? If that's what you mean, then, yes, it's very messed up."

"Belle shipped Harmony," sighed Rumplestiltskin.

"It's the only ship that makes sense!" huffed Belle.

"And it's not real, dearie," he sighed. "It's just a fake autobiography that real and very evil Harry Potter and Hermione Granger published after carrying out a genocide of the Wizarding World and making a fortune on magitech flying cars and zero emission trains. Really, the only down side," he mused, "is the global metropolitan infestation of crazed owls."

" _Why are they doing this? Why are they doing this_?" Jafar suddenly cried out, " _They said when you got here the whole thing started. Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? I think you're the cause of all of this. I think you're evil. EVIL! Get yourselves wands and wipe them off the face of the earth_!"

Everyone had stopped to stare at the crazed ex-wizard who snapped out of it and shuddered. "Sorry, flashback. _Worst_ Care of Magical Creatures class _ever_."

Henry just groaned and shook his head wondering if there was any great work of fiction that Isaac hadn't butchered for this idiotic fanfiction.

* * *

AN: So, yeah, I didn't like the _Harry Potter_ epilogue or care for Ginny Weasley. I only watched the pilot of _Wonderland_ , so my bad if I got any of Jafar's real story to mix up wrong. Shout-out if you know what TV show had a running joke of owls infesting cities instead of pigeons... or what Isaac has Jafar plagiarizing in his Hogwarts flashback.

Next up: Finding the not-so-Evil Queen... who is still a drama queen even without her evil.


	46. Scream Queens

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Answer to Chapter 30 Questions: _Futurama_ and _The Birds_.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE**

 **SCREAM QUEENS**

"So... no one ever locked you up in a tower?" Henry asked Belle as they journeyed to Regina's castle.

"Not that I recall."

"And you didn't sacrifice your independence for your town to be the Dark One's servant?"

Belle snorted. "Merlin's balls no! After I learned about the Dark One from Anna, I wanted to find a way to learn the rest of his secrets and ultimately control him! It's really rather pathetic that he fell in love with me. What kind of Dark One does that? I actually almost broke his curse, but I knew his self-loathing would keep it from working and then I pranked him and made him think I was dead for a few years. He forgave me, though, he always does. I don't even need this to make him keep running back!" she said, waving the dagger around.

"Wow, you might be the most evil character in this story," said Henry.

"No, pretty sure that's still the Blue Fairy," interjected Neal. "I hear the Dwarfs are her sex slaves."

"I thought fairies don't have junk?" recalled Nottingham. "Or Dwarfs for that matter."

"Well, not unless you temporarily magic it so," said Neal, "which is what makes her so depraved. Plus, you know, the whole fairy dust cartel and child slavery ring."

"And she has fake boobies!" piped up Tinkerbell.

Everyone turned toward her, surprised and Nottingham asked, "Where the hell have you been?"

"I was here the whole time, you assholes! You used that stolen evil fairy dust to make me bite-sized for that theft we had planned and then you fucking forgot about me! I almost suffocated in that stupid genie lamp!"

"Oh, er..." uttered everyone looking around, chagrined, "sorry 'bout that, Tink."

"Assholes!"

She glared at Neal. "And to think I slept with you!"

"Don't mind her," Neal said to Henry. "She's still upset that she found out her girlfriend moved on with a Dwarf after she got exiled to Neverland."

"NOVA WAS NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" Tink cried and threw a coconut at Neal's head.

Neal ducked and it hit Anastatisa who didn't even seem to notice.

"She's having problems coming to terms with her bisexuality," explained Neal more quietly. "Mostly because her last two girlfriends also dumped her for each other. Last I heard, Ruby and Mulan were having a super gay _Xena_ -like adventure in Asia... I mean Shangri-la-istan."

Henry's brows furrowed. "So... is Xena a real...er... fairy tale character or something?"

"No, that's a television show from the nineties," replied Neal, "one of the few series that started as a spin-off and became more popular than the original. Like a gay fantasy _Frasier_. Or... a fantasy _Frasier_."

"You're remembering your real self!" crowed Henry.

"No, they have television in Victorian London World," informed Victor. "We went there on an adventure of no consequence."

"Dr. Horrible wanted to steal a brain," said Nottingham.

"For science!"

"But we got betrayed by the evil Alice and White Rabbit and tortured until Jafar broke us out," explained Neal. "With the help of the Mad Hatter and Knave of Hearts, which is why we trusted them, but they really wanted to infiltrate our group to try and steal Jafar's staff and Peep's crook and combine them into a super real-hopping weapon device thing using this dagger made from a meteorite in Victorian London World that was supposed to have turned some guy immortal. Like the Dark One. But without the deals and stuff. He was trying to take over that world... or something... I think. We met some time travelers who were trying to stop him."

Henry frowned. "Isn't that Vandal Savage? The comic book villain who was a twenty-five thousand year old immortal neanderthal?"

"Well, that's what they called him," said Nottinghman, "but he was a four thousand year old Egyptian high priest who was linked by the meteorite bits to these two hawk god people who kept being reincarnated and only they could kill him... or something."

"But that's just stupid!" cried Henry and he fumed, " _Damn it, Isaac! Ruining my comic books too!"_

"Oh, look!" exclaimed Rumplestiltskin, "here we are!"

* * *

The harbor was bitterly cold, but at least they beyond the ice wall.

"It really is amazing," mused Anna, "how that subterranean cavern extended from the dungeon, under the mountains, and just opened up right here at the coast at sea level!"

"Yeah, let's not think too much about that," said Emma. "Now, we just need to find a ship."

"Well, that's easy. Blackbeard!" stated Kristoff.

"The ruthless, murderous pirate?"

"I don't know where you herd that nonsense! He's more into show tunes. His ship got grounded after hitting an ice berg, but last I heard he was hoping to take the Jolly Roger by farce."

"You mean by force?"

"No, farce. Pirates around here parlay via dance and song battles. At least they did when I was a kid, before Ingrid took over. My papa used to take me down to the docks to sell ice and there was nothing like being there for a good sea chantey throwdown!"

"Yeeeeeeeaaaaaah, okay, whatever," said Emma, shaking her head. Was it possible that Alternate Timeline Isaac was actually more intelligent than his original self? Like, seriously, who would write this bullshit?

* * *

Isaac put down his quill, annoyed and stated, "This isn't really coherent with my established universe."

"I like show tunes," Commodore Killian Jones stated bluntly, "and if you want passage to that godforsaken ice wasteland, you will write me a high seas musical."

"The Commodore also likes ladies corsets," sniggered the stout man beside him.

"Shut up, Smee!" hissed Commodore Jones, hitting him with his hat - and doing so revealing his unfortunate bald spot.

"He meant I like unlacing ladies corsets. From ladies. And then having carnal relations with them. Obviously," stated the navy man, quickly adjusting his hat as he was rather self-conscious of his bald spot.

"Really? Because you were getting awful friendly with that unicorn at the jousting match petting zoo, Commodore," said Smee. "From what I understand, they're usually skittish around post-adolescent males unless they're pure of body and that one tried to follow you back to the ship!"

" _Shut up, Smee_!"

"MINIONS!" Snow White announced, sweeping onto the deck in a white leather _Matrix-y_ dress and everyone stood at attention.

She turned to Isaac. "No musicals. I detest singing. And your main objective is _helping me get my daughter back_. Or, you know, I'll kill you!"

"I created you, you can't kill me," stated Isaac.

"No, you reshaped me from a spineless doofus into the badass queen standing before you," corrected Snow White. "And I thank you for that. And I did not kill you outright because I know that you too were a pawn of Ingrid's, falling prey to her promises of freedom from the oppression you lived in. But if you betray me, Author, don't think for a moment I won't break that quill and send us all back to those pathetic lives!"

"You couldn't break it," sneered Isaac in return, "only the next Author could do that. And no one knows who that is."

"I dunno," said Smee, "seems logical it would be that brat with the magical book obsession who was unaffected by your story rewriting."

"Hmm, yes it does!" agreed Snow White.

"Damn it!" growled Isaac. "Stupid little fucktard giving my characters sentience all over again!"

* * *

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY ESCAPED WITH EMMA!?" screamed Ingrid, the ice crystal chandelier shattering.

Her creepy snowman adviser sputtered out, "I-I'm sorry, Y-your Majesty. It seems somehow Emma regained her true memories and broke out the traitors Anna and Kristoff."

"They'll be heading for the coast," said Hans, "and no doubt seeking out Blackbeard. I'll head them off!"

"Ready my flagship," Ingrid ordered him, then turned to Olaf. "Go check on _Gerta_. If she asks about Helga, we're leaving for a mission to Misthaven and she is to remain here in my stead."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And go untie The Duke. It seems I will be unable to finish the evening's festivities."

"The torture kind or the rape kind?" asked Olaf.

"A bit of both. Now go before I borrow your nose for the next round!"

Olaf shuddered and quickly stumbled his freak living snowman body out of the throne room.

* * *

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" Regina scrammed, trying to strangle Tinkerbell.

"It was an accident! The Blue Fairy tricked me!" Tinkerbell exclaimed in defense while Bo Peep used her crook to keep the two women apart. "And _he's_ the one who magically trapped you here!"

"Hey, it was a deal!" Rumplestiltskin reminded, "and they ended up tricking me as well! And if _someone_ had taken her magic lessons seriously-"

"ENOUGH!" shouted Henry. "Look, everyone here got screwed, okay, and some of you are terrible people, but you're not evil like Isaac and Ingrid- well, Ingrid might just have a mental disorder, but Isaac is definitely a psychopath. We have to find my mom so she can use her Savior powers to break us out of this story!"

"Who is this weird child?" scoffed Regina.

"I'm your son," stated Henry.

"Wait," said Neal, "no way I slept with _her_."

"What's that supposed to mean!?" huffed Regina.

"You didn't sleep with her," said Henry, rolling his eyes. "Though your dad did sleep with her mother, so I'm like fifty-fifty it's gonna come out eventually you're half siblings.

"Anyway," he told Regina, "you fraudulently adopted me in a world where you were a villain imprisoning everyone else and my mom was a clueless orphan who went to jail because of Pinocchio."

"Oh, well, of course," nodded Rumplestiltskin. "Everyone knows that puppet children are irredeemably evil."

"Right, and we need to get back to torturing him in the real world," said Henry, "but my point, Mom, is that you were a villain but you were trying to be good and my birth mom, Emma-"

"Wait, _Emma,_ " said Regina, "as in the dead child of Snow White and Prince James?"

"Like... how do you just automatically figure I'm taking about _that_ Emma?" wondered Henry.

"Oh, well, it's simple," said the Dark One. "Snow White banned the naming of children 'Emma' and killed everyone with that name already. But Emma is not dead, dearies, she was stolen by the Snow Queen. Snow White isn't just a batshit crazy monarch, she's an oppressed batshit crazy monarch trying to get her child back from the manipulative bitch crazy monarch."

"One who hoodwinked her into a deal that, quite frankly, I'm jealous of. It was played out quite masterfully," sulked Belle.

"No it wasn't," groaned Henry. "The whole thing is full of massive plotholes and timeline inconsistencies! Your real self would be disgusted!"

"I'm disgusted by those unshaven pits," said Tinkerbell with a huff at Regina who glared.

"Oh, because you had such perfect hygiene in Neverland, did you? I'm sorry that I wasn't expecting visitors," snarked Regina, "or I would have gotten a full El Dorado wax for your pleasure."

"I told you, I was not trying to hit on you at that sunflower bar!"

"Can we go already?" sighed Henry, "it's creeping me out standing in the place where my mother murdered her father that she named me after."

"Sounds like you have a real fucked up family, buddy," said Neal.

"How many times do I have to tell you, _you_ are part of that family," Henry huffed.

"Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah, see, here's the thing, I'd rather be in denial of all that shit, okay? That way, I won't go insane or contemplate suicide or both."

"Yeah," sighed Henry, "I hear you, Dad."

* * *

AN: Wait, you're saying, didn't Hook kill Olaf in Storybrooke? Silly, readers, freakish living snowmen can't die! How does Evil Snow White know what her real self is like? Plothole alert!

Next up: Let's slap an ending on Isaac's piece of trash and get back to the real story!


	47. All's Well That Ends

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO**

 **ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS... WELL AT LEAST IT ENDS  
**

Two ships met on the high seas, one a naval frigate flying under the banner of Snow White, the other a galleon with a jolly roger raised above its crow's nest. Of course, the reunion between Mother and Daughter did not go according to anyone's plans.

Besides the small fact that this Snow White was an evil monarch who had slaughtered thousands of people, there was also Prince Hans who showed up with a very irate Ingrid who froze the sea all around them.

"You will not take my daughter back!" snarled Snow White.

"Oh, I think I will," she scoffed, magically snatching away and shattering the charm she'd given the younger woman to feign that she had ice powers, then glared at Isaac.

"We had a deal, little man."

"It's not my fault! Emma's brat tricked me!"

"Hey, I'm not a brat!"

"But you are dead," Ingrid hissed and materialized an ice dagger that she threw.

Of course, Neal lunged in the way of it and took the blade to the chest.

"Neal!" Emma cried, rushing forward. "No, you can't die again!"

He coughed. "Hey... it's not like it's... a real death... right?"

"I'll freeze you all!" Ingrid howled and began to conjure a blizzard.

Just then, there was a loud roar and a dragon appeared through the clouds, raining white-hot fire down upon the ice, melting the ships free - and setting Ingrid's ship ablaze.

"Noooooooooo!" screamed the Snow Queen.

As everyone looked in shock at Maleficent, Henry swung a large piece of rigging, knocking Isaac into the icy sea.

"If I'm going to die, you're all going with me!" Ingrid snarled and began shooting ice everywhere.

"Henry, you have to write us back to reality!" shouted Emma, cradling Neal's body in her arms.

"WHAT!?"

"Just dip the damn quill in Neal's blood and do it, Kid!"

And so he did.

* * *

"NEAL!" Emma shouted when she came to in the Dark Castle with a very confused Elsa.

There was a creaking sound and a moment later, Neal fell awkwardly out of the secret cabinet, nearly getting knocked out by Thor's Hammer.

"NEAL!" she repeated, running over and hugging him. "You're alive!"

"You knew it was just a fake a death, Emma," he reassured her with a half smile.

"I know, but still, I don't want to lose you again. I need you," she admitted. "You make me a better person, Neal. I can't be the hero I'm supposed to be without you."

"I'm sure that's not true, Em," Neal told her. "You're just a bit rusty. You'll get back into the swing of it."

Hook wandered in then holding a plate of food and a bottle of rum. "I found the kitchens! Much as I hate the Crocodile, they're brilliant. Make whatever your stomach desires! Look, it's that bloomin' onion thing from The Rabbit Hole, mate!" he directed at Neal.

"Seriously," Emma groused at him. "We just fought an evil ice witch in a fantasy story and were nearly burned by a dragon sorceress in said story, Neal died, and all you care about is fried food and booze?"

Hook rolled his eyes. "Yes and yes."

"I could eat," shrugged Neal. "Those onion things _are_ really good. Like, better than onion rings good."

Emma sighed. "Yes, okay, they are, but can we focus on the other ice witch we just freed from a magical urn?"

"Oh, right," nodded Hook, "where are my manners. You must be starving after being trapped for years in that musty bottle, luv. Bloomin' onion thing and rum?"

Elsa looked at the three of them, then she screamed and fainted.

"She must have seen the reflection of your bald spot in the urn," joked Neal while grabbing a handful of bloomin' onion.

* * *

AN: I don't get how Isaac was permanently dead in the story if everyone else who died was only fake dead, but maybe if the Author of the story dies in the story it's like... if you die in a dream you die for real? Meh, who cares! That's over with! (Points if you know the bloomin' onion reference!)

Next up: Back to that other storyline.


	48. Fishdicks

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Answer to Chapter 32 Question: Spike was obsessed with the bloomn' onion at The Bronze on _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE**

 **FISHDICKS**

"Deja vu all over again," uttered Neal as they walked the docks.

"Isn't that redundant?" asked Hook.

"It's a saying. The famous philosopher Yogi Berra."

"That cartoon bear on the demon picture box?" the pirate presumed, then amended, "Too bad we didn't pack another picnic basket. The food in these pubs is quite awful."

"You know," snorted Neal, "if you keep eating like this, you're gonna get fat. And no one likes a fat, balding pirate. Look at Smee?"

"I am not turning into Smee!" Hook hissed. "You take that back!"

"Then give me that candy stash you were hiding in your saddlebag."

"I have no idea to what you are referring."

"I think he means this one," Elsa cut in, stepping forward holding the aforementioned bag of sweets.

"Theif! Those are mine, ice witch!" Hook snapped and snatched the bag away before stomping on ahead of them.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Elsa and Emma rolled her eyes.

"What _isn't_ wrong with him? It'd be easier to name those things."

"You're sure we can find a ship fast enough to intercept Hans?" the blonde queen inquired, uncertain while eyeing warily the seedy-looking sea-fairing folk who were staring at her.

"You know," cut in Neal, "you _could_ have put on less conspicuous clothes. You stand out more than that douche walking around Storybrooke with more bling than a gangsta at da club and his chest hair blowing in the breeze."

"You did not just say 'gangsta at da club'," groaned Emma.

"What? I'm trying to educate Elsa on Land Without Magic slang."

"Not even Ruby says that, and she's the only person I know who actually goes clubbing. Well, and maybe Tinkerbell, but she's a thug," said Emma who then frowned. "I can't believe I just called a fairy a thug. Look, clearly spending theses days or weeks or however long we've been here with you two overly-testosteroneed idiots has started to rot my brain."

"Or maybe Metatron lied about curing your syphilis," quipped Neal.

Emma punched him in the arm. "Dork."

"You're just figuring that out now?"

She rolled her eyes and retorted more cheerfully, "No, but it's nice to be reminded."

Neal grinned at that, then groaned as he caught site of Hook flirting with a prostitute. "I'd better go rescue one of them from additional STDs."

After he'd strode off, Elsa inquired, "You had Cupid's Disease?"

Emma grimaced at that. "All I did was kiss him, I swear, on basically a dare for him helping save my father from... stuff that doesn't really matter. He said it was a canker sore, the bastard."

"Yes, he's rather... unlikable," agreed Elsa. "Far too moody. Emotionally suffocating. And he accosted me last night at the camp fire to try and trade rum for hair care secrets."

"Yeah, Great Grandpa's got problems."

That drew a confused look from the Queen. "That pirate is your great grandfather?"

"Unfortunately," conceded Emma. "He raped my great grandmother who gave my grandmother up for secret Dark One facilitated adoption after he'd hightailed his pervert ass back to Neverland where he mostly stayed for a couple hundred years, aside from his supply runs to bang barmaids. He _claims_ he only 'took them in the aft', but either he slipped or he's a lying piece of scum. Probably both. Also, he's Neal's step-dad."

"And you and Neal have a son named Henry?"

"Named by his adoptive mother who's my step grandmother for her father that she murdered to cast the Dark Curse that created Storybrooke to get revenge on my mother for ruining her life by getting her fiancé killed by her peasant-who-married-a-prince-named-Henry mother who would have married my prince grandfather instead if my grandmother, Captain Pervert's kid, hadn't framed her for theft and spun her actual tale of sexual deception that's tantamount to rape into her being a massive cheating slut."

"And I thought my family had rape issues after what you told me."

"I think it's like a general running theme in this world overall," said Emma. "I do feel a bit sorry for Ingrid, honestly. Almost molested by a pervert as a kid. Then almost raped by her sister's asshole boyfriend who used her sister as a human shield. She was trying to use her magic to save Helga and ended up punished by Gerta without being given a chance to explain.

"Which doesn't lessen the whole crazy shit prophesy business or pushing me in front of a speeding car," Emma amended. "You didn't go crazy in that urn, so the woman obviously was born with a screw a bit loose... like most of my family," she sighed. "But she should be medicated and institutionalized, not imprisoned and called evil. There's certified psychopaths like Regina's half sister who raped and murdered for fun and just because it was a Sunday, and then there's just a sad, delusional woman who probably has schizophrenia or something."

Neal had finally dragged a grouchy Hook away from the whore who now had his bag of candy, and reported, "A ship just in this morning reported seeing the _Jolly Roger_ before sunset somewhere off the coast of Hangman's Island."

"The best course of action then is to try and contact Ariel and have her scout around," said Emma.

"Erm... do we have to?" groaned Hook.

"Worried she'll fish slap you?" huffed Emma.

"No. And seeing as we don't have a magical seashell, how are we going to contact that fishy bi...er... lass anyway?"

Neal told Hook, "Actually, I have a better idea. We're going to call upon Poseidon and you're going to promise to give his daughter her voice back as soon as we return to the Land Without Magic."

"And just how would he even know-"

Neal took Hook's sword from his belt and slashed the pirate's hand. Hook let out a yelp and an alarmed look as Neal plunged the bloody cutlass into the sea and intoned, "Poseidon, King of Atlantis, Lord of the Seven Seas, I call parlay with thee!"

Hook swore. " _Goddamn it!_ I never should have introduced you to the Neverland mermaids!"

Elsa looked uncertain and inquired, "Will that really w-"

-276Before she had finished that thought, the water began to froth at the mouth of the harbor and something shot toward them like a torpedo just bellow the surface before bursting free at the dock, the mighty Poseidon, tentacles and all!

"Who summons the Great and... _Oh, it's you!_ " the Merman growled, a tentacle shooting out of the water and wrapping around Hook, yanking him off the dock.

"Eeeeep! Your Majesty! Don't kill me!"

"I was thinking more along the lines of extended water torture as humans cannot breath underwater!"

"Please! Please! I want to parlay! You can't torture a pirate who asks for parlay!" Hook pleaded.

Poseidon scowled and set him back on the dock. "Very well, _pirate_. What do you want?"

"To help you!" Hook told him, head bobbing. "I can give your daughter back her voice so she can return to this world!"

The Mer-King looked suspiciously at the pirate. "And why would you do such a thing, pirate, when it was you who took her innocence, who used her just to spite our kind?"

Elsa gave Hook a disgusted look. "You ravished a teenage mer-girl?"

"Wha-no!" Hook howled. "I took her voice. Her _innocent singing voice_ not her... I'm a nymphomaniac not a pedophile! Unlike, _Nealfire_ over here," he scoffed.

"Dude!" Neal exclaimed, "Emma was seventeen not seven. I _thought_ she was eighteen. And, besides it was _her_ idea. And we did it to 'Ashes to Ashes' while I wore a kimono. It was very classy."

"A Kimono, really? Women are into that?" asked Hook.

"What, you own one for your own _personal_ pleasure?"

"I like the feeling of silk against my privates as wearing leather all day really chafes. I had to kill a very important Shangri-la-inese... eh, bugger it, Magical Chinese pirate for it," defended Hook.

"Yes," interjected Poseidon with a glower, "I'm sure you were both very masculine in your Kimono-wearing. Can we get back to my daughter?"

"Sure. And about that," scoffed Hook. "Have you forgotten that you disinherited her when she didn't have her mer-princess skills?"

Poseidon's expression grew angrier. "I had to obey the established rules of our kingdom, pirate, or I would be a hypocrite amongst our people. Something that obviously means nothing to you!"

"How is disowning your daughter to be taken in by a couple of crazy witches and lured into a life of villainy honorable, fish-man?"

Poseidon made to stab Hook with his trident.

"Okay, okay!" Neal interceded, "no need to trade blame, yeah? Look, call it a familial obligation, Your Majesty? His kin needs a favor for a friend, which incidentally also helps him get back his ship, which makes him less of a mooching, lay-about pain-in-the-ass. A ship he'll take to another world and never bother you again. But he has to get the shell from the ship to help your daughter get her voice back."

"If that's the case, I could simply get the shell and go to this other world and retrieve my daughter," said Poseidon.

"Yeah, I'd like to see you walking around New York City in that get-up," scoffed Hook.

"Please," said Neal, "people would pay him to take selfies with him. _You_ on the other hand looked like a douchey off Broadway actor who got kicked out by his girlfriend in his costume after she discovered he was a peeping tom and burned all his real clothes and had been living on the streets on a rum bender for a week while stalking MILFs."

"I do _not_ want to sleep with my mother!" growled Hook.

Emma interjected, "Aaaaaaaaanyway, Your Majesty, The Land Without Magic is _without magic_. It's very different. You'd never be able to find Ursula. Rumplestiltskin is actually the only one who knows where she is."

"The Dark One? You'd make a deal with him?" Poisoned exclaimed.

"Naw, he's my old man," said Neal. "He owes me like three centuries worth of favors for leaving me to rot in Neverland by accident. Plus, dying to save his life. And if the whole thing with Excalibur in Camelot worked, the Dark One curse was permanently destroyed in a rather anti-climatic fight with an ill-tempered little man impersonating King Arthur... and his wife and some old-school magical spark from the Titans."

"Hmm, you speak of a Prometheus Flame. One of my ancestors had a torrid affair with that thief," recalled Poseidon.

"Really?" asked Hook, surprised.

"He was a man of fire. We are people of the water. It was a rebellious teenage fling," he explained, then after a moment of thought decided, "Very well, I will help you find your ship. But my daughter must be returned to me by the next King Tide."

With that said, Poseidon vanished beneath the surface of the water and Hook groaned. "Bloody hell, that's in less than a month!"

"Then I guess we'll be taking a road trip to New York when we get home," sighed Emma, massaging her temples. "I'll have to track down Lily too. Ugh. I am _not_ looking forward to that."

"You?" snorted Neal. "I'm not looking forward to roadtripping with the both of you _and_ your anamorphic enemies."

"Why can't we just sail my ship?" asked Hook.

"There's no port in Vermont."

"How did you end up going from New York to Boston through Vermont on the way to Maine?" asked Hook, bewildered. "I may not know much of that world, but I did study the maps Cora gave me, and those two kingdoms do not share a border anywhere near the ports of New York or Boston."

Emma frowned. "I took a wrong turn, okay? Regina was getting on my nerves bitching about Zelena and Robin and then we decided, what the hell, to pick up some maple syrup on the way... and stop looking at me like that."

"Sorry, it just sounds pretty gay," said Neal.

"Agreed," nodded Hook. "Henry's two mums going on a quest for maple syrup to make him pancakes... _mmm.. pancakes_..."

Emma punched them both in the arms. "I am _not_ gay for my own stepgrandmtoher! Not that there's anything wrong with being gay, of course," she amended with a nod at Elsa who was utterly confused, "but even quasincest is gross."

"Of course any sort of incest is morally abhorrent, but there's nothing wrong with being happy," said the Queen.

Neal pulled Emma aside while Elsa took a seat on some crates to wait and Hook riffled through their supplies for more food and booze.

"Elsa's into girls?" asked Neal.

Emma shrugged. "Well, a queen who's still not married even though her kid sister's engaged, she's weirdly insistent on the one evening gown she owns like she's trying to prove something, and most importantly, Hook never once even made a pass at her. The only other woman he never made a pass at is Mulan. _I mean, he hit on my mom and slept with Cora!_ I think he has subconscious gaydar or something."

"You mean to say Hook's lechery might actually have some use?"

"If 'use' is letting him lose in a bar and taking bets on women's sexuality for sport, then sure," snorted Emma just before there was an even bigger upsurge of water in the harbor than before.

People scattered in fear as the water exploded in a geyser that turned out to be the surfacing _Jolly Roger_ , terrified crew and all.

"You'd better keep your deal, pirate!" Poseidon said before removing his tentacles from the ship's hull and vanishing once more into the sea.

"ELSA!?" a bound Anna cried from the deck.

"ANNA!" shouted Elsa.

Hans moved to slit the girl's throat, but Emma blasted him with magic and told Elsa, "Help me immobilize the crew!"

"I can't! My magic hasn't worked right since you freed me!"

"You can do it! Believe in yourself!" encouraged Emma, giving her hand a squeeze.

Elsa then blew half the crew off their feet with a gust of icey wind.

"Yeah," Neal considered, "so gay."

"I know, right?" agreed Hook. "I have this recurring fantasy of her and Mulan in kimonos."

"You do realize that kimonos are actually Japanes, not Chinese..."

"Stop ruining my hot lesbian fantasy with your logic, Nealfire!" hissed the pirate before he was set upon by Blackbeard.

A sword and magic battle ensued that was quite exciting, if you're into that sort of thing. The seaside prostitute was also a bookie and took bets on who would win. In the end, it was a wash as there was suddenly a tingling of magic right around the area of Anna's naval.

"Oh no, a portk-I mean portal of some kind specifically keyed to me has been activated!" she cried.

"It's the wishing star!" exclaimed Elsa. "Ingrid must have activated it!"

"Use your lesbian magical handshake powers, Swan!" cut in Hook.

Elsa croaked out a confused, "Wha-"

"Just go with it," groaned Emma, taking Elsa's hand before they all joined hands and a web of magic washed over the enchanted ship.

And just like that, the ship was beached on a frozen sandbar near Henry's old play castle, minus Blackbeard and his crew.

A giddy Ingrid stood on the snow-covered beach. Barefoot. Another sign of her mental problems, no doubt.

"YOU BITCH!" shouted Elsa.

"YOU WILL JOIN ME, GERTA!'

"I'M ELSA, YOU DELUSIONAL WHORE!"

"BUT SOON YOU WILL BE GERTA. IT'S TIME YOU ACCEPTED THAT!"

'WHY DO YOU EVEN WANT ME TO BE THE WOMAN WHO WAS SO AFRAID OF YOU SHE TRAPPED YOU IN THAT URN AND MADE YOUR OWN PARENTS FORGET YOU EXISTED!?"

"STOP ASKING ME RATIONAL QUESTIONS AND JOIN ME! WE WILL DESTROY THIS PATHETIC TOWN AND RETURN THROUGH THE WARDROBE TO ARENDELLE TO RULE AS BELOVED SISTERS AS THE PROPHESY FORETOLD!"

Elsa tried to blast Ingrid with snow magic, but Ingrid countered it with her own snow magic, so it was a bit like Harry Potter and Voldemort fighting each other with core-sibling wands.

Emma finally snapped out of it and threw her own magic into the battle, knocking Ingrid back. The Snow Queen hissed at them and then vanished in a purple cloud.

"She's going to cast that stupid mirror spell, isn't she?" sighed Neal.

"There's a mirror spell?" asked Hook, intrigued, as he was drawn to his reflection the way raccoons are drawn to shiny objects.

"It makes people try to kill each other."

"Oh, well, that's no fun then is it?" he sighed.

"I suppose it depends who you want to kill," Neal shot at him with a narrowed-eyed look.

"Please, I would wipe the deck with you!"

"You've gotten beaten up by an old lady, a woman terrified of physical combat, a bookworm, a cripple, and a twelve year old boy who doesn't even know how to use a wooden sword properly," pointed out Neal.

"Hey, Henry never beat me up!"

"Not that you remember."

"Can we please get off this ship and someplace warmer?" griped Emma, reminding, "And don't forget your voice shell."

"Stupid mere-people," grumbled Hook, "always wanting their singing voices. Ursula made fun of my sea chantey that I wrote, did you know that? I wanted her professional advice and instead she was meaner than those judges on those singing shows that Belle watches on the demon picture box."

"Why are you watching singing competitions with Belle?" asked Neal.

"She thinks I have a very lovely voice and the Clock Tower has great acoustics!"

"You have an awful singing voice," said Emma. "I've heard you in the shower. She's bullshitting you."

"But why would she do that? Belle is the kindest, sweetest, most gullible person in Storybrooke!" huffed Hook, confused.

"Or maybe she's really the most manipulative," retorted Neal with a shrug. "There was a grain of truth in all of our fictional characterizations. You liked musicals, I was an unhappy thief..."

"Belle as the real mastermind? That's a scary possibility, mate."

"Almost as scary as having the middle name 'Cosmo'," snarked Emma.

Hook's brow lifted in Neal's direction. "Your middle name is 'Cosmo'?"

"No," huffed Neal.

"Oh my gods! Your middle name is 'Cosmo'!"

"Well your first name is 'Killian'!"

"Yes, but 'Cosmo' is worse, mate, and combined with 'Baelfire'? I'd rather go bald!"

"No you wouldn't."

Hook sighed. "No, I wouldn't..."

"There's nothing wrong with your name, Neal," Emma tried to reassure him. "I was just teasing."

"Yeah, well," he responded with a frown, "you wouldn't be if Granny wasn't so deaf and your parents named you 'Annawrad'."

AN: How does Neal know Emma's real intended name? I guess it's just some of that dead guy insight. Is Belle really more evil than the Blue Fairy? Who can say! The "Dork" line is from a fanfiction I read long ago. I no longer remember the story, author, or even fandom. The "Ashes to Ashes" bit is a reference to David Bowie and the 15 year old young lady who lost her virginity to him. Shame on all you so-called feminists out there who said the poor woman doesn't know her own mind; you're the reason there is a #WomenAgainstFeminism movement! (Anyone know what the chapter title refers to?)

Next up: Belle might not be a mastermind (or is she?), but she is smarter than your average Storybrooke character.


	49. The Mirror of Ecivedtolp

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Answer to Chapter 33 Question: Everyone one on _South Park_ realizes that saying "fish sticks" really fast sounds like "fish dicks".**

 **Note to jane: So true! It was just WEIRD that they said horrible things to each other... and then ended it by laughing hysterically and brushing it all off by focusing on their silly wardrobe change. This is how OUAT deals with serious problems between characters: deal with it under a curse, then pretend it didn't happen/forgive without dealing with it. Dark Swan/Dark Poochie is the latest example of that.**

 **General Note: Some formatting errors in the previous chapter have been fixed as well as Hook's recollection of Emma and Regina's roadtrip as I remembered after-the-fact that they found Lily before heading to NYC but after not finding her in Boston.  
**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR**

 **THE MIRROR OF ECIVEDTOLP**

"What do you mean there was no prophesy?" Emma asked The Apprentice.

They were sitting in the Library where the old creep was sipping tea after being released from the Magical Hat, because Rumplestiltskin had predictably lied and broken his promise to his son, blackmailed Hook for his coat cleaning services, and had been planning to Hoover up the fairies before Ingrid and Isaac derailed his plan. He'd also, presumably, intended to do something similar to that 'Ultra Dark One' con he managed in the other timeline, but thankfully, when the shady pawnbroker re-switched the real dagger for the fake one in Neal's room at Granny's, Neal switch them back, having been 99% sure his father was going to break in and do so.

An addict was an addict.

Naturally, Belle scheduled Rumple for extra counseling sessions with Archie... once he woke up from the magical coma he'd fallen into the moment Emma did her thing with Excalibur, which must have left him momentarily pissed off at the realization his switch-er-oo was switch-er-oo'd before he passed out.

In any event, Belle had been toting around the annoying enchanted rose that the old geezer from the hat had given her, because for some reason there was no more portable way to monitor Rumple's health.

"I'm saying," restated the real Mickey Mouse, "that I never even met the woman. I've heard of Ingrid of Arendelle, of course, and that tragic situation of which her people have no memory because of those Rock Trolls, but we never met. I came home one day after a spat with Rumplestiltskin and found my hat box had been mysterious returned, Isaac's book riffled through, and my wardrobe hijacked for personal use. I was able to use a spell on my quill to discern that she had written down a ludicrous 'prophesy' herself based on what she had read in the book, in particular Isaac's self-absorbed embellishments."

"You mean to say she hallucinated everything?" asked Emma.

"Oh, yes," nodded the Apprentice. "Ingrid was an unfortunate child who began to suffer from delusions in her late teenage years. Her parents kept her confined to the castle not because of her ice powers, but because of an unsound mental state which they feared would cause her to use her ice powers to harm innocent people.

"I suspect," he directed at Elsa, "your parents were concerned that the ice magic came in tandem with mental illness and that once you reached the same age as Ingrid, you would begin to... well... lose your mind, and so they were desperate to get help from Rumplestiltskin, to retrieve the ribbons that had kept Ingrid's insanity manageable by binding her to Gerta and Helga, two more-or-less mentally stable psychic influences. Of course, the Rock Trolls were another option in Ingrid's case, to entirely erase her memory to a degree that she became essentially a vegetable..."

"Or we could just give her a wardrobe full of anti-psychotics and send her packing," mused Regina.

"I will miss her ice cream, though," sighed Hook while rubbing at his chest where his heart had recently been returned by a none-too-gentle Regina after Emma had refused to be the one to return it. Gold had been storing it in Pandora's Box with the fake dagger and he swore he could still feel the nagging sense of claustrophobia and hopelessness that he hadn't understood because the Crocodile had also erased his memory of having his heart stolen.

So, now, Neal had spent the last hour making fun of him not knowing that he didn't have heart. Probably, those wispy-woop whatever things not wanting anything to do with him had been a tip-off, though Hook liked to think his heartlessness had allowed him to steal Farther's cup-sword so easily. Which meant Hook had gotten hoodwinked into saving that bastard's worthless life! He was not exactly pleased about that, but at least he was sure the Crocodile would be even more angry that A) his plan to become an even more badass Dark One failed and B) it was in part because of his attempt to blackmail Hook in that sordid plot!

You just couldn't trust an addict, Hook mused while taking a swig from his back-up bottomless rum flask. And sadly, you couldn't kill them when they were related to people who were sort of related to you via marriage and incest or something. Well, you could, technically. He'd killed his father. Regina had killed her father and her mother killed Snow White's mother, David's sort-of-father killed _his_ mother, and the Crocodile killed Regina's half-sister... though, to be fair, they all could have gang stabbed her to death and no one would have complained.

It was a pity he couldn't convince them that the Crocodile was comatose for good and let him stab the old bastard through he heart...

"Stop thinking murderous thoughts about my father," Neal hissed at him while Belle was explaining about the creepy talking mirror in Ingrid's ice cave.

"What makes you think that I'm thinking that?"

"You've got that twitchy eye thing."

"I do not have a twitchy eye thing."

"Yes, you do," interjected Emma.

"She's right, you do," agreed Regina.

"Yes, see, you're doing it right now," nodded David.

"You should probably have your blood pressure checked," considered Belle. "All the alcohol, junk food, and stress over going bald and getting fat... plus the STDs taking a toll on your system."

"I AM NOT STRESSED! I AM NOT GOING BALD OR GETTING FAT! AND I DO NOT HAVE ANY STDs!"

"You are, you definitely are, have you looked in the mirror? And that doesn't heal the brain damage from the ones you had," said Emma.

"You are not a supportive family member."

"You killed your father."

"He was a womanizing douchebag who replaced me _and_ didn't even name my replacement after me but after my jerk of a brother!" grumbled Hook.

"And you're a womanizing douchebag who slept with my kid's grandmother and wants to bang me, you're own great granddaughter."

"WHAT!?" Snow, David, and Regina all shouted at once.

"What, you guys didn't know they're related?" Belle uttered, rolling her eyes. "It's totally obvious from _The Complete Peerage of the Enchanted Forest_ ," she said, picking up a massive book that looked to be about 3,000 pages and was covered in dust.

She opened the book while everyone gaped in various states of horror and dismay.

"Eva is basically a female version of Hook, you see?" she pointed to the painting. "I don't know how _anyone_ could not see that. And considering that her adoptive parents were first cousins from a dwindling lesser royal house line that had suffered inbreeding-related infertility problems for several generations, and their summer house was on the coast near the port frequented by pirates who frequently shag prostitutes and ravish unfortunate maidens left with children they don't want... put together the dates and it's quite obvious. Plus, the birthmarks."

"Birthmarks?" uttered Regina. "Do I even _want_ to know?"

"It's a mole just above the left clavicle," said Belle. "Emma had hers surgically removed in New York. Eva had hers magically removed, I assume, as it doesn't appear in the later portraits of her, so either she discovered her paternity and sought to remove the reminder or it was just hereditary vanity-related. The same with her daughter," she nodded at Snow.

Snow blinked and uttered, "I remember having it magically removed when I was a young girl. I overheard my mother telling the Healer it was 'the mark of the Devil'."

"Oh, come on!" groaned Hook. "I'm not _that_ horrible! And from the sound of it, Eva was a terrible person!"

"Well, terrible people never think they're terrible people," pointed out Belle.

"But he doesn't have a mole," David pointed at Hook.

"Yes, I do," the pirate grumbled, tugging aside his shirt collar.

"I've never noticed that before, and you practically walk around with your shirt open."

"Yes, well, my unnaturally handsome face, perfect hair, and toned pectorals distract from it's unsightliness and generally make everyone blind to my flaws, both physical and behavioral. Hence, if I lose my hair and get fat I will be a hideous mole-monster freak!"

"You really don't have a lot of other positive qualities, I will admit," said The Apprentice. "All of those years in Neverland being exposed to pixie dust probably infused you with a sort of... glamourie effect that makes you appear more attractive than you actually are. The hair loss is simply a sign of returning you to your natural state without Neverland's imagination-based magic to shape you into what you want to look like. I'm afraid attempting to use magical means to forestall the inevitable will only lead to more unfortunate prices later on, Captain."

"Shut up! I am naturally good looking!"

"And the Arendelle lineages?" asked Emma, curious. "I mean, I do look _a bit_ like Helga, if you squint and cross your eyes."

"I don't have a book on those, but that doesn't mean Hook didn't shag some snowy wench who married into the family, or maybe _someone_ ," she threw a look at the Sorcerer, "handled adoptions for unwanted pregnancies like Rumple on the other side of the ocean."

"I plead the fifth, dearie," said the old man.

"Can I hit him?" asked Hook.

"Maybe later," sighed Emma and the wizard just harumphed.

"So... back to the mirror cave...," said Elsa.

"I just learned that Hook is my grandfather and you want to get back to the mirror cave!?" Snow finally squawked. "Emma, why didn't you say anything!?"

"Oh, I don't know, why didn't you tell me about having this weird old wizard cast a horribly selfish spell on me when I was the size of a lima bean?" Emma snapped in return. "Because I knew you would freak out. And because it's embarrassing and humiliating and disgusting to be related to him and to have been sexually attracted to him. It's just all kinds of gross. It's... it's worse than if someone made a puppy monkey baby monster! And can we focus on the mortal peril thing and get back to our fucked up family drama shit later?"

"Considering this crazy bitch is your foster mother, I think we're already deep in it," said Regina. "But it's nice to know I have an additional reason not to trust you."

"Yeah, well if I have Hook's DNA," smirked Emma, "so does Henry."

* * *

"I'M RELATED TO HOOK!?" Henry shouted, horrified, as he was being locked in City Hall. He'd been left out of the adult's only meeting at the Library _as usual_.

"I'm sorry, Kid," sighed Emma, "but yes."

"It's an abhorrent revelation, but I still love you, Henry," said Regina. "You are related to Rumplestiltskin, after all, _and_ Peter Pan, and Emma, and Neal, and Snow White and Prince Not-So-Charming and I didn't disown you after discovering all of that."

"Oh my God," groaned Henry, dropping his head in his hands. "I'm hereditarily doomed! Add in my upbringing raised by the Evil Queen and I'll probably go full-on evil!"

"That's not nice," huffed Regina.

"I mean, I thought I just had a _little bit_ of evil DNA, but this changes everything!" Henry continued. "I mean, statistically, I'm now way more likely to go full-on evil. _And_ I'm good math which means even if I don't have magic I could totally go like doomsday weapon James Bond villain evil!"

"Henry, that won't happen," Emma tried to reassure him, but he glared.

"Do I need to list all of the selfish, asshole things the people in this family have done? Between my genes and my upbringing, I am going to be in therapy until I'm old to keep from torturing small animals and wanting to screw my mom!"

Regina and Emma exchanged a concerned look and Regina prompted, "You don't actually want to-"

"NO! GROSS!"

"So the wine and chocolate basket...?"

"It was Belle's idea. You were moping around the house for days, so I asked her for girl-related-romance advice. She said that's what people do in chick flicks."

"Oh, _thank God_ ," groaned Regina. "That's half the reason I agreed with Emma to send you back to therapy!"

"OH MY GOD! YOU ARE SO GROSS, MOM!" Henry cried and ran off, locking himself in the Mayor's Office.

"Well, at least he'll stay in their moping and thinking we're gross," mused Emma.

"You married your great grandfather. I killed my father and named Henry him," pointed out Regina. "We are a bit 'gross'."

"You also slept with the man whose wife you killed."

"You mated with the Dark One's loser son."

"Neal is not a loser! He's survived three different worlds and used math and science and capturing Pan's Shadow to get out of Neverland."

"Fine, he's mathematically gifted. Maybe. But Pan let him leave. Stop trying to imbue your ex-boyfriend with qualities he doesn't have. It's rather liberating to see fate's intended love interests for the doofuses they are."

"Things still not going well with Robin, huh?"

Regina sighed. "I haven't seen him in weeks. We had a fight before the Book mess and he hasn't talked to me since. Also, he's been eating a lot of ice cream. I can't deal with a man who uses junk food as a coping mechanism."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, maybe if we don't manage to stop this spell," mused Regina, "those two bearded buffoons will off each other."

"We could be so lucky," sighed Emma, shaking her head.

* * *

Meanwhile, back at the ice cave which Ingrid had decorated like the Fortress of Solitude as an homage to her love of General Zodd - Ingrid watched a lot of movies with no job or friends in winter in Minnesota and a decade of nothing to do in Storybrooke - the Snow Queen was ignoring the fact that her toes had started to turn black from frost bite and making faces in her mirror, because her parents always said 'it would stick that way'.

It didn't.

But she was going to 'stick it to' the people of Storybrooke.

With her magical yellow ribbons in hand - the idiots hadn't even thought to look for them while Rumplestiltskin was unconscious - Ingrid began casting the insidious "Curse of Shattered Sight".

* * *

AN: The mole thing was inspired by something...

Next up: The battle royale begins! Who will drop the most destructive truth bombs? Who will fight dirtiest?


	50. Dazed and Confused

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Answer to Chapter 34 Question: The Amulet on _Galavant_ , the one that Isabella absolutely wore every day even though Chef had never seen it before.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE**

 **DAZED AND CONFUSED**

"'My mama said, "To get things done, you'd better not mess with Emma Swa-"

Emma paused in her walk through the forest at a tingly feeling on her wrist and noticed that she now had a new accessory.

" _Sonofabitch_!"

"I thought those wispy whatevers were supposed to protect against dark magic?" asked Elsa, notching her own ribbon.

"I guess it doesn't work for light magic being used for nefarious purposes. _Damn it_."

"What now?"

"Well, we find your crazy bitch aunt before everyone kills each other."

* * *

"It's your fault our son has a stupid name!" David shouted through the bars of one cell to the other.

"You're the one who suggested 'Neal' in the first place! What kind of name is 'Neal' for a prince? It's worse than 'David'!"

"What the hell does that mean!?"

"It means I like the name 'James' better and I lied when I said you should keep it for monarchy-related continuity so the people wouldn't challenge your leadership over George's kingdom! Who pledgees undying love to someone without telling them their actual name? Oh, right, someone like _Neal_. It must be something sheep related!"

"What's wrong with sheep!?"

"They smell! And they're stupid! And I got trampled by one when I was five and it was very traumatic!"

"Maybe that's the reason you're so stupid then! Did it trample your head?"

"Excuse me!?"

" _You. Are. Dumb_ ," David snapped at her. "Oh, you seemed clever when we met, but you apparently woke up from that sleeping curse with brain damage, baby, because you went from a tactical genius to a complete moron and it's been downhill ever since!"

" _I'm dumb_!? You made a deal with Rumplestiltskin _and_ King George. You lead an army of murderous thugs to your mother's doorstep! And you got suspended by your own daughter because instead of doing your job, you sit around eating donuts and polishing your gun in between beating up people you didn't like back home! _And you tried to teach a twelve year boy how to drive stick shift down a crowded street in the middle of the day_!"

"Which you thought was a great idea and laughed off the property damage!" David shot back. "Who's the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him, _Mary Margaret_?"

"You take that back!"

"Nope. It's out there now. Walking around in the world. Just like our daughter's potential for evil that was supposed to make her a well-balanced, well-adjusted person capable of free will. But, you know, _someone_ couldn't hack being an actual parent, so she badgered me into letting a creepy old wizard perform a horrible spell that doomed _both our daughter_ and an innocent child to miserable lives!"

" _And I feel really bad about that_!"

"Do you really!? Because saying after the fact to just move on and let it be a reminder to be kinder people is not feeling bad, it's turning a crime into some kind of fucking narcissistic delusion!"

"Then you should have stopped me! But you're always worried that I think I'm better than you! That if I dump your ass, you'll lose all the power and pretty things you have as a prince!" snapped Snow. "You're just like your brother, _David_ , but you won't admit it! You like power, fancy clothes, and slitting the throats of your enemies!"

"Well, someone has to do the throat-slitting in this family, or we'd all be repeatedly fucked over by villains you keep giving a second chance to! At least I know the difference between justice and forgiveness and when the latter is just being a damn fool!"

"Hey, I killed Cora! I saved our family!"

"And then had Regina rip out your heart in some bullshit suicidal depression! And _then_ you had her rip out your heart to bring me back from the dead!"

" _I wanted you to get to raise your son_!"

"Like Hell! You weren't even thinking about our son! You had no idea if we could even share a heart! For all you knew, there was a fifty-fifty chance you'd die too, taking our unborn child with you! Well, congrats, you succeeded, but I was going to go to Heaven and be at peace, and you ripped me out! You brought me back to this fucked up, miserable life! _That's why I drink and eat donuts and beat up people! To numb the agony of being alive and bonded to a complete moron!_ " shouted David. "The only plus is that you nearly get killed with your stupidity so often, there's probably like an eighty-five percent chance neither of us will make it to our son's first birthday!"

While Snow gaped, David went in for the kill, "You are selfish, Mary Margaret! You are selfish and foolish and I am done enabling your bullshit justifications and behavior because we are soulmates and true love!"

"Are you saying you want a divorce!?"

"I'm saying I want you to own the fuck up to all the stupid shit you've done and emotionally blackmailed me into going along with just because you're the one with leadership experience and loving you means you're always right!" David shouted. "Your experience sucks and it doesn't!"

Regina reentered the bullpen right then, back from City Hall and inexplicably now in her Evil Queen clothes. With a flick of her wrist, Snow White was also in her favorite furry outfit and Charming in his bland burgundy leisure suit.

"Having a marital spat, are we?"

"Stay out of this, Regina!" snapped Snow.

"Or, what, you'll shoot me with that arrow you don't have?"

"At least I have skills that don't rely on magic! I'd kick your ass in a real fight!"

"I'd like to see you try!"

"Then let me out and I will!"

"All right then!"

Regina opened the cell door - and Snow White lunged at her, punching her right in the face.

"YOU BITCH!" Regina screamed.

"YOU KILLED MY FATHER!" Snow roared, throwing another punch.

"YOU GOT DANIEL KILLED!" shouted Regina, grabbing Snow by her once-more long hair.

"I WAS TEN AND YOUR MOTHER MANIPULATED ME!"

"I DON'T CARE! YOU WERE A SELF-CENTERED BRAT WHO WANTED TO BE MY BEST FRIEND AND THEN ABANDONED ME TO A LOVELESS MARRIAGE WITH A CREEPY OLD MAN SO YOU COULD SPEND ALL YOUR TIME FAWNING OVER YOUR GODDAMNED HORSE! WHY DO YOU THINK IT SUDDENLY HAD TO GO OFF TO _A SPECIAL RETIREMENT HORSE FARM_?"

"YOU KILLED STARLIGHT GLIMMER MCTWINKLESHINE!?" Snow screamed, horrified and infuriated.

"THAT'S RIGHT! I KILLED YOUR STUPID PONY!"

"OH, IT'S ON NOW, BITCH!"

The hair-pulling slugfest escalated while David watched from his cell, not really embarrassed to admit-

"It's so hot, right?" interjected Hook wandering over with a key to unlock David's cell.

"Yeah, it... wait, _you tried to sleep with my daughter_!"

David punched him in the face.

Hook staggered back. "What the he-"

"I'm gonna make you kiss floor, Hook!" he growled before grabbing the pirate by his thinning hair, slamming his face into the bars and then pushing him to the ground.

"Kiss the floor, Hook! It's your real true love!"

Some flying office furniture from Regina and Snow's fight forced David to duck, letting up the pressure on Hook who used his prosthetic to yank the quasi-Prince by the ankle off balance.

As David fell, Hook scrambled to his feet, shouting, "I didn't know she was my kin! You put her in a box to Maine!"

"For her own good, pirate!"

"She'd have died of dehydration and hypothermia, prince!"

"Like when you left her in that dungeon!?" countered David, attacking with his sword.

Hook drew his own sword and it was on.

"I WAS WORKING FOR CORA! I HAD NO CHOICE!"

"THERE'S ALWAYS A CHOICE!"

"LIKE NOT PUTTING YOUR KID A BOX TO ANOTHER DIMENSION!"

"FUCK YOU, HOOK! YOU ONLY SAVED MY LIFE TO FUCK MY DAUGHTER!"

"AND I ADMITTED THAT TO YOUR FACE BEFORE I EVEN DID IT BUT YOU WERE STILL NICE TO ME! THAT'S ON YOU!"

"I WAS ONLY NICE TO YOU BECAUSE MY WIFE TOLD ME TO BE NICE TO YOU AND I WOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN ANY SEX OTHERWISE!"

"AT LEAST YOU WERE GETTING SEX! I WAS TRYING TO BE CHIVALROUS PINING FOR MY OWN KIN! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY BUSTY LASSES I PASSED ON THAT I COULD HAVE SHAGGED BEFORE LOSING MY LOOKS!? AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!"

"HOW THE HELL IS IT MY FAULT!?"

"IF YOU HADN'T CRUSHED THAT MAGIC HAT AND THEN LET YOUR IDIOT ADOPTIVE FATHER BURN THAT CRUSHED HAT BECAUSE YOU ARE A TERRIBLE SHERIFF, YOU WOULD HAVE BROUGHT EMMA BACK TO THIS WORLD BEFORE I HAD A CHANCE TO DEVELOP INCESTUOUS FEELINGS FOR HER!"

"HE'S RIGHT!" Snow interjected as she ducked a punch. "THAT WAS EXTREMELY STUPID, DAVID!"

"YOU'RE THE ONE WHO JUMPED THROUGH THE DAMN HAT AFTER HER SAYING YOU COULDN'T LOSE HER AGAIN AND THEN WERE ALL TOO HAPPY TO ABANDON EMMA IN NEVERLAND TO A LIFE WITHOUT EITHER OF US!" David shot back while parrying an attack from Hook.

"YOU ARE ALL IMBECILES AND I HATE YOU!" roared Regina, breaking the rules and using magic to throw them all into the walls.

"CHEATER!" said Hook.

"YOU PROMISED NO MAGIC!" growled David.

Snow didn't say anything as she'd hit her head extremely hard on the metal bars of the jail cell and was laying in a crumpled heap with a rather nasty bleeding head wound.

Regina poked her with her fancy shoe. "Damn it, get up so I can keep beating the crap out of you!"

"I think you killed her," said Hook.

"No, she's still bleeding," argued David.

"All over my shoes too!" grumbled Regina and then she turned and punched Hook in the face.

He fell to the floor and coughed out, "What the hell was that for!?"

"For teaching my son to cheat and stealing that car! He could have been killed! And all the times you took him out on that smelly shrimp boat without my permission because his birth mother was too lazy and a slutty gullible moron like her mother to tell that you were an alcoholic pervert rapist!"

"Hey, Snow is not slutty and you don't get to pull the rape card, Regina!" interjected David. "I know what you did to Graham!"

"Who was a much less benevolent person than I made him under the Curse!" Regina shot back. "He was sexually infatuated with your teenage wife!"

"Really?" mused Hook. "Emma has awful taste in men. She must have been horribly screwed up as a child. I bet she was molested." He smirked at David. "Your daughter was probably diddled by a pervert as a kid and it's all your fault, princey boy!"

"SHUT UP!" howled Daivd.

"HAS EVERYONE FORGOTTEN THAT I WAS DIDDLED BY AN OLD PERVERT AT EIGHTEEN AFTER LOSING MY TRUE LOVE!?" Regina reminded.

The fight resumed while Snow lay bleeding and forgotten on the floor.

* * *

"So...we should probably go do something," Henry unconvincingly said while eating Funyons and watching the closed circuit TV in the Mayor's office.

"Yeah, probably," shrugged Neal, who'd come over with said Funyons, a case of beer, and some of Happy's weed and was holding an ice pack from Regina's mini fridge over a lump on his head.

Of course, Henry had not been thrilled to see him at first. While Neal had avoided the marbles there was lots of shouting and throwing of apples and horse figurines as the kid let out his pent up anger at Neal trusting August and sending Emma to jail so she had to give him up, so he was raised by a homicidal loveless bitch who made him feel crazy, and the whole not coming to Storybrooke with August or after he got the postcard and then bringing Tamara to Storybrooke and dying twice, the second time without Henry even remembering him so he kept hating him even worse for weeks...

Anyway, Henry's rebellious teenage impulses - such as that to try weed, beer, and eat massive amounts of junk food - outweighed his anger, just as Neal had suspected it would. Sure, Emma would kill him later for getting their son getting high and tipsy, especially when there was probably a family history of alcoholism... but he'd only let him have the one beer and focused on making an apple bong.

"Like, really, Grandma's bleeding a lot," Henry observed, then snorted. "She should wear a helmet like people with epilepsy considering how often she gets knocked out. It's like her thing."

"Her thing?"

"Yeah," giggled Henry. "Regina's thing is fireballs. Emma's thing is that superpower bullshit. David's thing is trying to look like a hero by putting himself in mortal peril. Belle's thing is books and getting tied up. Grandpa Gold's thing is lying about doing dark magic. Hook's thing is being a pervert stalker douchebag drunk. And Snow's thing is trusting bad guys who knock her out."

"I suppose that is true," Neal agreed. "What's my thing then?"

"Well, I haven't known you long, but I'd say it's mostly not giving a shit," considered Henry. "You're like seriously jaded, Dad. Totally with the 'I don't give a fuck, whatever' attitude."

"I won't deny that," nodded Neal after taking another apple hit. "Neverland fucked me up, buddy. And then coming to this world all alone? Emma was my one bright spot."

"That's kind of pathetic considering what a jerk she is," said Henry.

"She wasn't always a jerk," argued Neal with a shrug.

"I guess," agreed Henry. "For like five minutes after we met, maybe, though she did spend most of her time being condescending, though I didn't realize it when I was ten. I think she must get that from her mom. Or maybe she hit her head real hard when she fell through that hat portal."

"Maybe," Neal said and tipped his head at the monitor. "That really is a lot of blood."

* * *

AN: There was a Swanfire fanfiction in which Emma sang a personalized version of "Ashes of Ashes" while house-sitting with Neal. Great story!

Next up: The battle royale continues!


	51. Shattered Sight Fight Club

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Jane: Kitsowitz are pretty dumb. Yes, we all just tried to murder each other! Let's laugh about it and braid each others' hair! Teehee!**

 **Note to Mir: Yee of little faith. Henry will have revenge on the dirty pirate! (Happy has some GREAT weed. But the mellowing effects won't last.)**

 **Note to Hypocrite much: You really shouldn't criticize tagging when I have an explicit warning for this story that you clearly didn't bother to read. Hypocrite much?**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX**

 **SHATTERED SIGHT FIGHT CLUB**

Putting Ingrid out of commission had turned out to be pretty easy. All they had to do was pretend they had turned into Gerta and Helga... and slip a mickey into the champagne. Of course, that didn't end the Shattered Sight spell.

But True Love was supposed to break any curse, so with that in mind, Elsa set off to see Anna and Kristoff at The Charming loft and Emma headed to City Hall, hopeful that a maternal forehead smooch could put an end to this madness.

Her hope dwindled, however, when she found the atrium outside Regina's office cloaked in a thin smoky haze.

She knew that smell. It was the smell that had taken months to get out of the Bug after Phoenix and she felt her anger begin to boil... and realized that, perhaps, knocking out Ingrid and removing the ribbon was not the brightest idea. But it was too late to go back now.

And, really, someone needed an ass-kicking she decided when she picked the lock and found Neal and Henry butchering the basket of apples she'd brought Regina. The office was full of apple bits, empty chip bags and pop cans - _and beer bottles_.

"You let our son smoke pot and drink beer!?" Emma exclaimed, startling the pair.

Neal blinked hazily at her and argued, "What? It's medical grade. And Bud Light Lime tastes like a lime jolly rancher fished out of Mickey Rork's mouth. Figured it would put him off alcohol so he wouldn't end up the next alcoholic in your family tree."

"It tastes like the Jolly Green Giant's ejaculate," agreed Henry. "But pot is awesome!"

"Pot is not awesome! I might have made something of my life if I hadn't spent my teenage years stoned in the back seat of stolen cars!"

"Yeah, but then I wouldn't exist," Henry shot back, then added, "Oh, wait, but you didn't want me anyway. You gave me up. _Didn't even have a name for me or even look at me when I was born_."

"That's not true! _I did want you!"_ Emma exclaimed, "I just didn't think I could be a good mother!"

Henry did a slow clap. "Well, _bravo_ for that self-realization. You shoulda stuck with it and just focused on not sucking at the Savior thing, 'cause I know all about the other timeline thanks to Deadbeat Dad here. _Ha 'dead'_ ," he giggled.

Neal glowered at the insult and Emma glared back at him for blabbing everything to their son.

Henry smirked and got up, walking over to Emma with a calculated look that was eerily similar to Rumplestilskin. "I know you ignored me and you hurt me to save your jackass boyfriend that you forced me to hang out with," he said, leaning in close. "You let me go to hell. You are a terrible parent!"

Emma was torn between tears and anger, but suddenly in a white-hot flash anger won out. "Really!? Well, it's hard to be a good parent to a terrible kid! You have zero respect for personal privacy and property. You have tried to emotionally blackmail everyone in your family to get what you want, starting with the day you showed up on my doorstep and including your bullshit 'Regina, you're not a villain, you're my mommy' crap so she'd give us happy memories, which frankly, are now a load of emotionally traumatizing crap that makes even knowing who I really am as a parent a goddamn nightmare. _And you skip school so much it's a wonder you didn't get sent back to the third grade, you lazy little shit_!"

"I'm a lazy little shit!? What do you even do as Sheriff? Sit around in your office eating donuts and playing _my_ computer games with your dad! At least Gramps goes out and patrols, even if it's just to beat up innocent people who cut him off! Oh, wait, you also used to doodle creepy anime style drawings of you making out _with my step grandpa_!"

"THAT WAS ONE TIME!"

"They were naked and he was doing something with his hook that I can't unsee!"

"Shit, Emma, that's nasty," sniggered Neal.

"That's all you have to say?" Emma snapped at him. "You know what? Why do you even bother smoking weed! You are just as annoyingly mellow and 'fuck it all whatever' when you're not high!"

" _Being mellow and 'fuck it all whatever' is the only way to survive my shitstorm of a life without being medicated!_ " Neal shouted at her, getting to his feet and tossing his ice pack aside. "Life sucks, Emma! I thought you were aware of that!"

"Of course I am aware! My life has sucked too!"

"But not like mine! I had _nothing_ when I got to this world after _centuries_ of nightmares about my father choosing magic over me and being hunted like an animal by a psychopath and ignored by the bastard my mother left me for. And everyone here? They were fucking assholes! I quickly realized that the only way to be happy was to spend as much time as possible alone, which was a fucking tragic joke after being alone for hundreds of years! I got a dog after I made it out of the System, but the maid left the motel room door open and it ran away! I got abandoned by a _dog_.

"The only thing I ever had going for me was the ability to BS my way through anything. I even got a job - but then all I could think about was how much I hated my job! But I was too overcome with fear to quit. How would I pay my bills? Without a job I'd never get a loan to take out a mortgage - and I didn't even know what the hell that was, just that it was part of growing up and fitting into this world! But I was already worried that I wasn't saving enough for my retirement.

"So I stole those fucking watches! It was the only way out of my misery! But I fucked that up and I had to run and I got you caught up in it, and I thought I was doing the right thing by giving you up. I thought August would help you! And I'm sorry that he didn't! But you think my life was rainbows and sunshine after that? You were the only person I'd ever loved who never hurt me - and I spent the rest of the next decade helplessly watching porn and trying to tell myself that it was worth being a fucking miserable loser for the rest of my life, so when I got that postcard I thought I could settle for a creepy woman who was probably catfishing me if you got to find your family and be happy _\- but you stabbed me the goddamned back, Emma_!" Neal snapped, as worked up as he'd ever been, including yelling at his father in Neverland. " _How's that for 'mellow_ '!?"

"You kinda did, Emma," agreed Henry.

"And you totally inherited your parents bad parenting skills," amended Neal.

" _Well at least I was there for more than a couple of weeks before dying_!"

" _Better a good parent for a couple of weeks than a lousy parent for decades_!"

"YOU BOTH SUCK!" shouted Henry. "YOU'RE SELFISH AND STUPID ASSHOLES!"

To Neal he seethed, " _You could have come here with August or when the Curse broke and Mom would have taken you back! But instead you were a fucking coward and you 'settled' for a psychopath who almost got me killed and you acted like a fucking stupid jerk to Mom because of your goddamn insecurities instead of manning the hell up and telling you were sorry until it was too late! And who the hell just decides to just use dark magic after three hundreds of years being totally anti all magic_!?"

To Emma he snapped, " _You acted worse than the idiot teenage girls in my class! You were all giggly and shit over Dad but then the moment he was sorry and wanted to work it out, you pushed him away and fawned all over Hook because of your fucking abandonment issues and then Dad died and you acted like you didn't even give a shit, because, hey, it's not like your magic killed him or anything_!"

Henry repeated, "YOU BOTH SUCK! YOU ARE SHITTY PEOPLE AND TERRIBLE PARENTS! I HATE THIS FAMILY! AND I HATE MAGIC! I DON'T WANT MY DESTINY TO BE SOME FUCKING MAGICAL WRITER FORCED TO RECORD THE BULLSHIT HISTORY OF ASSHOLES FROM A WORLD THAT IS A BIG FUCKING JOKE!"

Henry threw his apple bong at Regina's favorite mirror, shattering it.

Which was enough to snap them all momentarily out of the red haze of magical anger. And for Emma to realize that Henry, the sneaky little shit, had removed her protective - but no longer fastened by Ingrid's will - ribbon and set it on fire in the joint-filled ash tray.

"Ahhhh," said Neal, "we should probably do something about your mom there. She's lost a lot of blood."

Emma look at the monitor and grumbled, "Goddamn it! That woman gets hit on the head more than all of the Loony Tunes characters combined!"

"I know, right?" snorted Henry. "It's kinda pathetic."

* * *

"... smell like a goddamned reindeer fart and pick your nose!" Anna was shouting when Elsa entered the Loft.

"Yeah? Well who waits until marriage anymore!?" retorted Kristoff. "And your incessant optimism is more annoying than that creepy little shit Olaf that wouldn't exist if you hadn't had an unhealthy obsession with building snowmen that carried over far too long into adulthood!"

"We live in a kingdom that has snow for ten months of the year! There isn't a lot to do!" Anna argued. "And you trim your toenails with a knife you call a 'toe knife'. Who does that!?"

"Everyone who didn't grow up a fancy-ass princess! And at least my reindeer knows the value of silence! I can't get through five minutes of that with you! You never shut the hell up!"

"BOTH OF YOU SHUT THE HELL UP!" Elsa roared, causing the pair to fly apart. "Do you know how annoying you are!? And do you know how humiliating it is to have everyone in the kingdom talking about how my kid sister is getting married before me and trying to set me up by sending random men to the palace!? And I know you're doing it too! Did it ever occur to you that I like being single? Or maybe that I don't even like men!? How the hell can you not even tell your own sister is gay!?"

"You don't seem very happy," said Kristoff.

"It's what people in this world call being sexually attracted to someone of the same sex, you reindeer-stink moron! I LIKE GIRLS!"

Kristoff looked gobsmacked. Anna looked befuddled for a moment, then deduced, "Oh... so that handmaiden I setup to get fired because I thought you liked her more than me and then she got run over by an oxcart and was permanently brain-damaged and didn't remember you-"

"I WAS IN LOVE WITH HER, YOU IDIOT!" Elsa yelled.

"So... this is awkward," muttered Kristoff.

"Stupid curse," huffed Anna.

"Yeah... curse," said Elsa, hiding her ribbon-festooned wrist behind her back.

* * *

The Sheriff's Station was a complete mess. It looked like the Wraith had ransacked it again, Henry mused as he munched on Funyuns and took a swig of Mountain Dew, trailing behind Emma and Neal who had set aside their bickering and were ignoring his snarky commentary to ensure Snow White didn't bleed to death.

Sure, they all hated one another, but... you know... family and all that bullshit.

Emma grumbled about wanting to bitch-slap her mother and then magically healed her. Thankfully, Regina had taught her that you didn't need just love magic to do light magic... or neutral magic. Bitch-slap magic could work too.

Snow came too with a groggy look and a smile that quickly transform into a scowl as she took in the scene of David, Regina, and Hook battling with swords. Of course, Regina had made hers a super fancy guilded sword!

"Oh, what a surprise, Emma," Snow snarked, "You screwed up being the Savior again!"

Emma glared. "Well you're the one who made me the Savior with your selfish-ass spell before I was even born! You should win an award for worst parent in Fairy Tale Land! Even Pan admitted to being an asshole who didn't like his kid instead of just neglecting his kid and pretending he was parent of the year!"

Snow smoothed down her fur and snapped, "Well fine then. You know what. I don't like you, Emma. You think I'm selfish? You think I'm a hypocrite? Fine. But you're just as two-faced. You say you want to be a good person, a hero, but then you break all of your so-called ethics when it suits you. You hurt whoever you need to in order to save whoever you need to, whether they deserve it or not and who cares about the collateral damage.

"You baited Regina," Snow continued nastily but truthfully, "when you got here until it backfired and hurt Henry. You tried to kidnap Henry. And your shitty detective work got me arrested and if Gold hadn't been a shady asshole looking to screw over Regina, Katherine would have been murdered. You trusted August because, what, he was a hot jerk in leather who wanted to screw you? That's your type, I guess, isn't it? Too bad Neal left out the leather pants when he got to Storybrooke, or you'd be banging him, August, and Hook in a four-way, you slut!"

"I AM NOT A SLUT!" Emma shouted. "And at least I didn't have the man I cheated on my husband with do my vaginal exams and deliver my kid!"

"Well, since he's gay it doesn't really matter does it? But I figured if Whale saw my vagina like that, he'd never think about having sex with me again!"

"Yeah, that makes sense," David nodded, thoughtful. "I'm not sure I want to."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure I want to either!" Snow snapped at him. "If Emma is anything to go by, our genes combine to make stupid, slutty failures! Our son is probably doomed to a future in the janitorial services, paying hookers for sex!"

"There's nothing wrong with being a janitor!" huffed Neal.

"Or paying for sex!" said Hook, amending, "though I generally got them so drunk that they passed out and I could skip out on the bill!"

"You're disgusting!" Emma seethed at him. "I can't believe we were ever anything to each other!"

Hook glared back. "Oh, yes, let's go over this again! What an incestuous arsehole freak I am for all of the things that I did that I ever actually did! You must have bewitched me with your Savior heart magic, because I can't believe I was ever attracted to _and thought I could have true love_ with a bitchy little hypocrite like you!"

"She gets that from her mother," scoffed Regina.

"I may be a bitchy hypocrite, but you're a self-entitled drama queen who blames everyone else for her fuck-ups!" snapped Snow.

As the two began name calling again, Henry said to Neal, "You know, Dad, it is kind of pathetic. I mean, it would have been nice to have someone a bit less of a loser for a dad, especially when my other timeline stepdad was an asshole pervert. Just say'n."

"Yeah, Neal," scoffed Emma. "Way to make nothing of your life and not even get me my happy ending."

"Really? Way to fuck up _everyone's_ happy endings, Emma! Who's the bigger loser, huh?" Neal countered.

" _Maybe I wouldn't have fucked that up if you'd had the balls to stay with me_!"

"And you wondered why we didn't want to help you," Snow sneered at Neal. "If it was between a handsome rapist pirate with a ship full of doubloons who treated our slutty daughter like a trophy and you... well... you know how those chips fell."

"I should be insulted," Neal retorted, "but considering you brought nothing but war and curses to your people and cursed your own daughter to get out of being parents and then split your heart without any thought of your second kid's life being put in jeopardy all so you could use Emma as a pawn _again_ to save your own asses from yet another psycho family member who wouldn't even have a vendetta against you if you'd executed Regina like she deserved, your judgment means jack shit to me."

"Screw you, _person_ ," Regina sneered at Neal. "At least I didn't let the people I let live starve to death or get heart massacred by my mother like Snow White did."

"I didn't let your mother kill anyone!" Snow growled.

"You're _all_ terrible parents," Neal cut back in. "And terrible rulers and just plain jerks. But Regina is right that you're worse! You get off on using other people's indoctrinated feudal loyalty to pretend you're great people who are beloved for your compassion and wisdom, but you wouldn't know compassion if it bit you on your asses and there's more wisdom in a fortune cookie than the bullshit you try pass off as sage advice!"

He held up his hand for a high-five, which Regina reciprocated, though she looked disgusted at having done so before she scoffed at Snow, "Trying to set me up with Robin even after knowing I murdered his wife. What the fuck was that about, Snow? How is that being a hero or compassionate? And the man is a complete moron. He's a better match for _you._ "

"I'm a moron?" raged Snow. "You thought you could get that Author to rewrite your story to make Robin not a moron and start over from scratch - _which would have left Henry, where? Not existing, you selfish bitch! We're lucky Ingrid got him before you_!"

"Touché," said Henry.

"STAY OUT OF THIS!" both women snapped at him.

"Oooooooo, Funyuns!" Hook finally noticed and Henry glared and snatched the bag away.

"Like hell I'm sharing my Funyuns with you, you diseased pervert!"

"Hey, I'm your diseased pervert kin, boy! Hand it over!"

"Not unless you want to lose your other hand, asshole! Who tries to bang their stepson's baby mama five minutes after he dies by getting her drunk? TWICE!? And all the bullshit stories you gave me about your father-son times with my dad!? FUCK YOU, YOU DIRTY PIRATE!"

"Yeah? Well, fuck you! You mixed my blood with the Crocodile's!"

" _Which means I'll probably grow up to be an alcoholic megalomaniacal slut, you whore_!" said Henry and he kicked Hook in the shin.

"What the hell was that? Was that supposed to be you picking a fight? You don't want to pick a fight with me, you little punk!"

"Right, cause you're soooo good at winning those! Five foot tall women kick your ass!"

"You take that back, brat!"

"Make me, manwhore!"

Meanwhile, Regina was growling at Snow, "You ruined my happily ever after, you gullible, bratty little shit! And I'm sorry your horse had to die to take you down a peg or two. But you cried for a week before getting a new pony while you and your stupid horse _made me hate horses_ and they were the only good thing I had left in my life! I had to kill _my_ horse and father to cast the Dark Curse-"

"Technically, you didn't have to kill your horse," interjected Neal. "You just misinterpreted the rules."

"SHUT UP, YOU USELESS _PERSON!_ "

" _Better a useless person than a terrible person_ WHO IS ALSO AN EVIL HOMICIDAL RAPIST WITCH!" accused Emma.

"Really!? You actually want to be friends and that's what you're going with, Miss Swan!?"

"No! Because I don't actually want to be friends! I feel bad for screwing over this other Latina chick when I was a kid and I was overcompensating by transferring that guilt onto you!"

"Wow, that's so racist!" exclaimed Hook while trying to hit Henry with a broomstick.

"IT'S NOT RACIST!"

"It kind of is," said David. "Also, you are a hypocrite for suspending me when you're an even worse sheriff than I am! Who the hell takes their parents to crime scenes? Or lets the hospital lab test a potential murder victim's heart in a town you think is being run by the murderer who has already shown herself to be buddy-buddy with the Chief of Staff? I mean, that's just plain stupid, Emma! Not to mention taking motorcycle rides to the middle of the forest at night with a stranger who had been stalking you and your son and making sexual advances at every opportunity!"

"SHUT UP, DADVID! I'D ONLY BEEN ON THE JOB TWO MONTHS! AND YOU PUT ME IN A FUCKING WARDROBE WHERE I WOULD HAVE DIED WITHOUT A STOW-AWAY PUPPET WHO RUINED MY LIFE!"

"I WAS ONLY DOING WHAT YOUR MOTHER SAID! SHE HAS STUPID PLANS INVOLVING TRUSTING SHADY PEOPLE, BUT SHE WITHHOLDS SEX IF I DON'T GO ALONG WITH IT!"

"I WITHHOLD SEX BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY FORM OF POWER WOMEN HAVE IN OUR PATRIARCHAL CHAUVINIST PIG RUN SOCIETY WITHOUT TURNING INTO AN EVIL HOMICIDAL RAPIST WITCH!"

Snow and Regina high-five, but Regina amended, "This doesn't mean I still don't loath you!"

"And I still intend to bitch slap you into next week!" hissed Snow.

"And I still hate your selfish guts for abandoning me and replacing me with a new baby five minutes after finding me!" interjected Emma. "And you for trying to murder and poison me and psychologically fucking up my kid!"

"You haven't been his parent long enough to have the right to call him yours!" snapped Regina. "And don't pull that other timeline bullshit, because you didn't have a soul and neglected him worse than I ever did and fully admit it!"

"Also," added Snow, "you being a morally corrupt slut who abandoned her child so she could rob liquor stores and get high because of the influence of this no prospect pervert is not helping your case, Emma!"

"And naming your kid after someone you basically sent to his death so people would think you were honoring him instead of covering up being guilty as fuck is not helping yours whether he was a no prospect pervert or not!"

"I am not a pervert and I have prospects!" Neal growled. "I'll have you know I had an interview for a well paid illustrator position at a very important publishing company and I might have gotten the job if my phone hadn't fallen out the window and broken because of August's fucking postcard! Instead my rent check bounced and I had to take a loan from the woman I just started dating, which should have been a clue that she was conning me, but I just wanted to be happy! WHY THE FUCK DOES EVERYONE GET TO BE HAPPY BUT ME!?"

" _Pretty sure none of us here are happy, mate_!" retorted Hook, just before Henry shot him in the balls with a taser.

While Hook was falling over and pissing his leather pants, Snow took the broom and knocked the taser of her grandson's hand. There was then a scramble for the thing with a lot of punching and eye-poking. Regina eventually came out with it and tased Snow in the chest, shouting:

"HOW DOES YOUR DARK SPOT FEEL NOW, BITCH!"

Emma had found a can of pepper spray and aimed it at Regina's face, leaving the Evil Queen howling in agony and clawing at her eyes.

David took the broom and started beating on Hook as the pirate tried to get up. "THAT'S FOR LEAVING MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER TO DIE IN A DUNGEON! AND THAT'S FOR THREATENING TO RAPE MY WIFE..."

Emma aimed the pepper spray at Neal shouting, "YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME AND THEN YOU BETRAYED ME AND LEFT ME KNOCKED UP IN PRISON, YOU ASSHOLE, AND YOU CAN'T FORGIVE ME!?"

"MAYBE I WOULD IF I ACTUALLY BELIEVED YOU LOVED ME INSTEAD OF JUST ACTING ON SOME FUCKED UP ABANDONMENT ABUSE COMPLEX! AND, YOU KNOW, HADN'T GONE TO HELL TO SAVE MY ASSHOLE STEPDAD FIVE MINUTES AFTER I DIED WHILE LEAVING ME DEAD!" Neal yelled back. "ALWAYS FIND THIS, BITCH!" And having found David's can of pepper spray aimed it right back.

They both ended up stumbling around in pain.

Henry took a folding chair and slammed it into David's back, sending him to the floor beside Hook while growling, "THAT'S FOR BEING A SHITTY GRANDPA WHO COULDN'T EVEN MAKE ME A FUCKING POPTART WHEN MOM AND GRANDMA WERE IN THE ENCHANTED FOREST AND FOR NEARLY GETTING ME KILLED CRASHING INTO A FIRE HYDRANT IN A CAR WITH NO SEATBELTS OR AIRBAG BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO BE A COOLER GRANDPA THAN A SYPHILITIC DOUCHEBAG! NEITHER OF YOU ARE COOL! I'M TWELVE! YOU'RE BOTH DORKS AND I HATE SPENDING TIME WITH YOU!"

Ceasing in his physical assault, Henry yelled at the rest of them, "SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL? I AM SICK TO DEATH OF HAVING TO MEDIATE THIS STUPID FAMILY LIKE A GROWN-UP! I AM THE ONLY REASON YOU PEOPLE EVEN TALK TO EACH OTHER BUT NO ONE TELLS ME ANYTHING OR LETS ME DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN TELL ME TO DO MY HOMEWORK AND 'OH, HENRY, YOU REALLY ARE SPECIAL EVEN THOUGH YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MAGICAL POWERS'. YEAH OTHER THAN BEING A SLAVE TO GODDAMN FATE TO WRITE DOWN YOUR SHITTY-ASS STORIES ABOUT HOW NOTHING HORRIBLE YOU EVER DID IS YOUR FAULT!

"I WISH I HADN'T BROKEN THAT QUILL SO I COULD WRITE YOU ALL TO THE UNDERWORLD BECAUSE MAYBE BEING TORTURED BY EVEN BIGGER ASSHOLES THAN YOU IS THE WAY TO MAKE YOU GET THE FUCK ALONG OR NOT FUCK EVERYTHING UP WITHOUT ME GIVING STUPID SPEECHES EVERY FIVE MINUTES! _YOU ARE NOT HEROES. YOU ARE NOT VILLAINS. YOU ARE A BUNCH OF GODDAMNED SELFISH PRICKS WHO DON'T DESERVE HAPPY ENDINGS!"_

After a brief silence, Regina huffed, not quite sure where Henry was due to being blinded, "Now that's just rude! You're grounded, young man!"

"FUCK OFF, MOM!"

" _Don't tell your mother to fuck off, Henry_!" snapped Emma who was trying to use a stale cup of coffee to rinse her eyes.

"Show some respect for your elders, Henry!" added Snow.

"Oh, shut up!" Emma snapped at her. "I can't believe you were going to name me 'Annawrad'! You are the absolute worst at picking out names! I thought being named after a trash blanket was bad, but that's worse!"

"And clearly highly inaccurate, because you turned into a dark-hearted slut with the emotional maturity of a shallow-ass emo teenager! I should have named you 'Bella'!" retorted Snow, punching her in the face.

"And clearly Isaac bullshitted those stories about you, because they were highly inaccurate as you turned into a selfish and stupid jerk!" Emma threw a punch right back.

"I can't feel my sword!" cried Hook, staggering around and clutching his groin.

"I lost a tooth!" spat David.

"Oh, shut up you pussies!" snapped Snow. "For a misogynist prick and chauvinist pig, you are the biggest goddamned wusses I have ever met!"

"You take that back or I'll rip off that ugly weave!" David countered.

"It's not a weave!"

"Like hell it's not!" scoffed Regina and she grabbed and pulled.

"Let go, you bitch!" shrieked Snow and she poured Emma's cup of stale coffee down the front of Regina's fancy evil dress.

Neal punched David in the face, snarling, "I'll break another tooth for reserving your 'I will always find you' shit for a diseased pirate instead of your grandson's goddamned father, you asshole! And another for accusing me of not having prospects when you'd still be sheering fucking sheep if it wasn't for my father! Mooching off your wife and lying to an entire kingdom about who you are is not heroic!""

 _"Neither is leaving the woman you love because some jerk tells you it's the right thing to do!"_

 _"Which is exactly what she did to you, but you forgave her proceeded to fuck up Emma's life together long before I did!"_

"YOU FUCKED UP HER LIFE FIRST, PIRATE!" both men shouted and tackled him. _  
_

Needless to say, the battle was back on, the tasing and macing a temporary setback that might have hampered their vision and coordination but did not deter any of them from throwing more punches, office supplies, and verbal insults.

David and Neal proceeded to wail on Hook in between getting in a few punches at each other. Regina, Snow, and Emma were all pulling each others hair and shrieking insults like they were in an episode of _Dynasty_.

Henry had poured Hook's rum on one of the jail cell cots and set it on fire, the rest of them oblivious to the growing flames and billowing smoke that for some reason didn't set off a smoke alarm... probably because Emma and David were lazy-ass sheriffs who never checked or replaced the battery... or maybe it just shorted out during the ice storm or power surge from Mary Margaret's dumbshit method of restarting the electrical grid all at once instead of in stages.

The fighting continued until there was a sudden explosion as a blast of ice shattered the water cooler and Elsa exclaimed, "ALL OF YOU SHUT THE HELL UP AND STOP FIGHTING!"

She used her ice powers to freeze them in place while she put out the fire, though it didn't stop everyone from glaring at each other or veins in necks from throbbing.

"Okay, Miss Weird Sequin Fetish," Emma scoffed, "how are you going to break this spell then?"

"Oh, I don't know, how about we find that creepy wizard that my bitch aunt probably stole it from!?"

Everyone exchanged a look and shrugged.

"Yeah," said David, "that could work. Let's go. But just so we're clear, I still hate you all."

"DITTO!" everyone agreed.

* * *

AN: Ah, fun times them all beating on each other! Part of Neal's rant is taken from Were-Lizard Guy Mann in _The X-Files_ "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster". The oxcart lesbian thing is taken from _Call the Midwife_. (What's the 'toe knife' from?)

Next up: Can these idiots work together while wanting to kill each other?


	52. Hail, Caesar

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Answer to Chapter 36 Question: Frank on _It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia_.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN**

 **HAIL CAESAR**

They found the Merlin's Apprentice in his mansion. This was after they stopped by the library to retrieve Belle who was in the middle of a knock-down-drag-out girl fight with Ruby over having been left chained up in the Library all night over a year ago, something for which Belle apparently held a deep and simmering grudge.

But, it seemed, both held more animosity toward Snow and Regina than against each other and so a tag-team grudge match was on between the bookworm and werewolf and princess and sorceress until Emma pulled the fire alarm and Elsa turned the sprinkler spray into painfully ice hail.

It didn't help that Anna and Kristoff showed up and started fighting with David over the shady secret business the two peasants had been involved in at some point a few years plus a Dark Curse ago that may or may not have involved a kitten smuggling ring for a troll poker den. And Belle over the whole her leaving Anna to die thing... though Emma wasn't quite clear on how the details of that were different since Belle swore she'd never been to Arendelle. Possibly, it was the Sorcerer's Apprentice impersonating Belle to try and maintain some fucked-up timeline to achieve his end, but whatever the case, Anna nearly impaled Belle with her own stripper heal before David pulled her off.

And then Tinkerbell wandered out of the Dark Star with a bunch of looted beef jerky, punched Regina in the tits and told Hook his guyliner was smudged and he looked like a drown racoon which made him cry.

But they were all more angry at the Apprentice than each other, so with pitchforks and torches that Regina had conjured, they bashed in his fancy door and caught the old geezer just as he was about to make a run for it through his wardrobe.

"Oh, no you don't, you old creep!" shouted Regina throwing him into his empty bookcase. "Was this part of your plan all along? Did you leave all of your magical shit out so that crazy woman would find it and screw up breaking the Dark One's Dark Curse? Did you trap that stupid writer in your book so we'd unleash him instead of just killing the asshole who was clearly a homicidal psychopath, which would have been the obvious thing for a villain to do unless he had some shady ulterior motive like wanting the Underworld unleashed on us all? _Are you working for the Devil_?"

"And she means the real Devil," interjected Emma, "not that gas-stove-haired douche with a classic car and expensive suit fetish."

The Apprentice shrugged. "I guess you'll never know, you pricks!" he laughed and then zapped himself with his dildo wand.

Emma took his pulse and swore, " _Goddamn it, he's dead_!"

"I didn't know you could _Avada Kedavra_ yourself," mused Henry.

"That's not a real spell for killing people," said Belle.

"Isn't it a play on 'Abracadabra', a derivation of Aramaic words meaning 'to create'?" asked David, which got a weird look from everyone. "What? I read _Harry Potter_. I had too! I woke up from a coma and everyone was talking about it!"

"In other words," scoffed Regina, "Mary Margaret gave it to you as part of your book club and you read them so you'd be able to answer her book club questions which would be rewarded with sex."

"Well... yes..."

" _David_!" cried Snow.

"I was cursed!"

"Actually," interjected Belle, "the magic word 'Abracadabra' is not originally from an Aramaic phrase that means 'I create as I speak' because even if it could come from the root which means 'to direct', given the context, it cannot possibly be a verb. If it was a noun, it would have to mean 'plunder or booty'-"

"Works for me!" said Hook with a grin.

"But if it _were_ the verb 'to speak'," continued Belle, "it would also have to be Hebrew, rather than Aramaic. Which means it really is a myth, one of several competing Aramaic etymologies for the phrase that actually arose in the late 1800's and is more likely from third century Greek and Latin, but some lazy 'authority' was simply looking for a combination that works and settled on Aramaic. Which means that J.K. Rowling's attempt to seem witty by turning a creation spell into a destruction spell is really just poorly researched bullshit."

"Um... that's great to know," said Henry.

" _Nerd_ ," said Ruby through a cough.

" _Bitch_ ," Belle coughed back.

"Sluts," added Regina, earning glares.

Belle threatened while holding a letter opener, "Don't make me shank you! You held me prisoner for years, never apologized, turned me into that slut, never apologized, and then took my heart to take Rumple's heart just to be a stuck-up bitch while Emma was away!"

"Oh, well, I'm sorry," snarked Regina, "that we have to go over this again, like you haven't been bitching about it since the Library!"

"Regina does have a point," said Snow. "It's getting old."

"You're getting old," Belle countered. "Who's the fairest in the land now? Not you, you washed up has-been in your granny panties with a massive ass who actually thinks that frozen yogurt you're consuming by the gallons is fat free! But then you clearly lack common sense when you assigned the man who physically assaulted me on multiple occations and tried to murder me with a gun to protect me and basically threatened me to not protest about it for my own good just to please your real slut of a daughter!"

"It wasn't to please our slut daughter!" huffed Snow. "We were in a hurry. And Hook had changed."

"Yeeeeeeeeah, not really," said Hook. "If it had been to my benefit, I'd have betrayed you and thrown you in a woodchipper. Ordinarily, I'd say also soil youfor your husband, but I don't like fatties."

"I AM NOT FAT!"

"You are a little bit," said David.

"I JUST HAD A BABY! DO YOU THINK WOMEN'S BODIES JUST IMMEDIATELY RECOVER!"

"Oh, spare me," scoffed Regina. "You put on thirty pounds of Zelena's bullshit health foods in the last two weeks of your pregnancy. You are fat and dumb, honey."

"Yes, well, you have a big ass too!"

"Point proven," snorted Regina, smacking her enviable ass. She then scowled in annoyance. "Where is that damned archer to drool over my perfect ass!"

"I thought you didn't want him anymore?" asked Emma.

"I don't! But I want him crying in his cookie dough over what he can't have! _Damn it!_ "

"Hey, uh," interjected Henry, "can we get back to the dead wizard? I mean, how do we know he's not just in some magically induced opossum state and just waiting for us to leave?"

"Oh, right, he could be only mostly dead," Neal snarked. "How about we all go to the Underworld to save him. I mean, he's clearly such a nice guy for all the lying to us and using us, and trying to leave us for dead. Hmm, who does that remind anyone of? Oh riiiiight," he glared at Hook, then turned to Henry. "Got any catchy operation names to further insult me? How about 'Operation Tallahassee' or 'Operation My Dad Is a Loser So Let's Save This Douchebag Instead'?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about!" Henry snapped.

"I'm talking about Emma being right that you're a crappy son! You never honored my memory. You didn't give a shit about my things, about knowing who I was. And you just caved like bitchy little wuss and made friends with that asshole who ruined my life!"

" _That never happened_!"

"IN ANOTHER LIFE IT DID, AND I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN THAT YOU REPLACED ME WITH A FAKE REFORMED HOMICIDAL RAPIST!"

As father and son glared at each other, Hook stabbed the wizard in the shoulder with his sword. "Nope. Not faking it. So... we can rule out the Underworld bit, yeah?"

"Just to be sure..." David stabbed him with his sword. "Yeah, definitely dead."

" _David_!?" Snow huffed.

"What? He's _dead_. You said I like to stab things. Maybe I do!"

"Let me try! I never get to stab anyone!" said Belle.

"Stop hogging the dead guy!" snapped Emma with her pocket knife.

"This is for fucking true love!" declared Neal, stabbing the dead wizard right through the heart with a fire poker.

A few minutes and a lot of blood later, Ruby sniffed and inquired, "Does anyone else smell gas?"

"Yes, actually," nodded Regina. "It's quite strong. But where is it coming from?"

Tinkerbell suddenly ran into the room and exclaimed, "The kitchen! I pulled the line on the stove and lit all the candles in the fancy-ass ballroom! Wildcard, bitches! Yeeeeehaaaaw!"

Everyone looked at Tinkerbell like she was insane and then Emma and Regina magically poofed everyone outside just before a massive fireball erupted behind them, lighting Storybrooke's night sky and shooting up fireworks from the various burning magical potions.

"YOU NEED SERIOUS HELP!" Regina growled at the ex-fairy.

"I know, that's what Archie tells me."

"YOU DESTROYED OUR WAY HOME!' shouted Anna, trying to strangle the ex-fairy and then bursting into tears when Kristoff pulled her off.

"You have serious emotional issues, honey."

"I know," sniffed Anna. "It comes from being the less physically attractive sibling of a monarch. I channel my insecurity and jealousy into illogical quests to gain justice for other people I know nothing about to curb any innate royal sibling drive to murder my sister and take over the kingdom. It's why I trusted Ingrid. Elsa, I'm so sorry about that! And the whole thing with the maid!"

"It's okay, Anna," Elsa assured her.

"That's really a thing?" asked Kristoff. "I mean, the sibling thing not the lesbian thing."

"Oh, it's a thing," nodded Regina.

"Yeah, definitely a thing," agreed David. "Though it's more nurture than nature. We all blame our parents, step parents, or fake parents that we had to pretend were ours to keep from being executed."

Kristoff frowned. "Man, I liked you better when you were an easy-going kitten smuggler."

"That is so wrong, David!" exclaimed Snow. "Kittens are adorable!"

"And trolls are less likely to attack innocent villagers when they are tired from gambling all night and full from eating adorable kittens," he countered.

"That is true," nodded Regina.

"Aye," said Hook. "During my recent highway robber days, I stole from some trolls after an all night kitten poker bender. Smee was even able to draw penises on their faces they were so docile from their kitten gluttony."

"Can we please stop talking about eating kittens - and anything to do with Hook and penises?" groaned Henry.

"Can we get back to _us getting home_ ," reminded Elsa. "If the wardrobe is destroyed, then what are our options? Because as grateful as I am to you, Emma, for freeing me and helping me reunite with my sister and defeating our aunt, I really don't want to spend any longer in your company than I have to. You people are not especially likable, to be honest."

"Now you know how I feel!" scoffed Tinkerbell. "But don't worry, there's a new portal doohikie every couple of weeks around here."

"True," said everyone with a nod.

"Seriously," amended Belle, "it's almost to the point of absurdity. I mean, Rumple went through centuries of trouble to augment a demonic ball of energy to transport us all here because of some bullshit the Blue Fairy told him, we get here, and suddenly a unicorn queef could open a portal."

"It's the thinning of the membrane between worlds due to the Dark Curse," imparted Neal. "Every time it has been cast, the soft spots get softer resulting in the creation of new or manifestation of presumed extinct portals. At some point, the actual forming of enough new portals began to cause cracks in that barrier which has caused the laws of magic to start going wonky, and if enough cracks form before they can before they can be patched, the worlds will attempt to merge and one will be completely obliterated from existence."

"Of course! That makes complete sense!" nodded Belle. "But how to patch the cracks. And, of course, send Elsa and Anna home without worsening the issue..."

" _Nerds_ ," coughed Regina.

"Nerds are the people who'll save the world, you know," scoffed Belle. "Not wizards or queens. Henry should be proud that he inherited intellect instead of magic, as it seems the two are entirely incompatible without one self-destructing the other."

"It does kind of seem that way," sighed Emma.

"I suppose," grumbled Regina.

That's when they realized the violent urges had abated into their usual daily animosity and dysfunctionality which was more public humiliation based than homicidal, and they all blinked confused by their strange clothes and bloody weapons.

Really, they should have noticed the blood and wardrobe change earlier, but it was pretty dark out and other than Belle and Henry, none of them were going to win Mensa awards.

"Wait... did we just repeatedly gang stab a dead wizard?" asked Snow.

"Pretty much, yeah," said Ruby. "Well, I mauled him a little while you were stabbing."

"To be fair," considered Neal, "he was probably a demon minion of Satan."

"Right. Obviously. So we did the universe a great service by ensuring he hadn't enough blood or intact body parts left to regenerate as demons are want to do," agreed Hook.

"Yes, exactly," nodded Snow. "It was very heroic of us."

"Extremely," said Belle. "I only wish Rumple had been here to join in the demon disemboweling. He would have enjoyed it so much."

"Right... so... we're never going to discuss this, right?" said David.

"Yeah, definitely not," groaned Emma. "Well, other than in therapy. I think we all need therapy."

"Poor Archie," lamented Ruby. "Who's he going to go to for therapy?"

"Well, that's assuming Geppetto didn't kill him for murdering his parents," reminded Belle.

"True. Would we be so lucky that Archie threw August into a woodchipper?" asked Henry.

Emma and Neal gave Henry a slightly perturbed look and the teen shrugged and defended, "What? August is an asshole! And he's not even _real_. Plus, he stole my lunch money and flushed my homework down the toilet at school _twice_. And before that, he had a stash of naked pictures of Emma in his typewriter box!"

Emma crossed her arms. "Oh, I won't need a violence-inducing curse to throw his ass in a woodchipper!"

"Right, throw the puppet in some sort of mulching machine," nodded Hook. "I can get into that. But can we get ice cream first? Last chance before we send the crazy bitch home!"

* * *

And so, with Ingrid tied up and unconscious in the walk-in freezer, the still mobile and with only minor cuts and bruises people of Storybrooke and three interlopers from Arendelle raided Any Given Sundae.

"I wonder if Olaf is okay?" mused Anna as she dug into a pint of Butterscotch.

"Who's Olaf?" asked Emma.

"Oh, this snowman that was brought to life when Elsa's magic went crazy!"

"Er..."

"I'm sure he's fine," lied Hook. "Probably laying on a beach back in our land."

"He's a snowman, he can't-"

Just then Snow gasped, "Oh, ice cream headache!" and then slumped over, hitting her head on the table on her way to the floor.

"It's like her head is a hard object magnet or something," said Kristoff.

"I guess we should call 9-1-1," sighed Regina, "and hope the paramedics didn't lobotomize each other."

"Couldn't we just magically poof her to the hospital?" asked David.

"When do we ever do that when someone is injured? You know how Whale feels about people being poofed in the ER. Besides, I'm not paying those paramedics to sit around on their asses all day!"

"Whatever," shrugged Henry, "but I'm taking my ice cream with me."

"Damn right!" said Hook, trying to initiate a fist bump which got a glare from Henry.

"My wife is bleeding out of her ear on the floor and you people are concerned about ice cream?" huffed David.

"What? She's Snow White. She's like... literarily incapable of not being okay," said Henry.

"Yeah, well," Emma mumbled, uncomfortable, "the literary thing might be changing..."

* * *

AN: Nothing good ever comes of post-success parties with this group! Belle's bit about Aramaic is from /2014/01/29/abracadabra-is-not-aramaic/ and I have no idea if it's correct or not. "Wildcard, bitches! Yeeeeehaaaaw!" is Charlie's line from _It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia_ "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis" after he cuts the brakes on the rape van crammed with trashcans of gasoline. (If Tink is the Wildcard, then Hook is the Looks, Belle is the Brains. David is the Muscle, and I suppose Snow is the Useless Chick? Or maybe that would be Robin who has yet to show up for some reason!)

Next up: What's wrong with Snow White?


	53. Butterfly Effect

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT**

 **BUTTERFLY EFFECT  
**

Storybrooke General was a busy place. Sadly, Henry found August was still alive and mostly intact, though his arm was in a sling and he had a black eye. When the puppet man smiled at Emma, Henry made a nose-cutting gesture and Neal leaned in close.

"You get Emma that twenty grand, or I'll rent the woodchipper myself."

Archie, meanwhile, was trying to comfort Geppetto and apologizing for enabling his puppet fetish instead of helping him form human bonds.

"We're not going to talk about our... feelings concerning all we said earlier, are we?" shuddered Regina.

"God no!" exclaimed Belle. "When do we ever do that? Anna talking about her emotional problems was more than enough for tonight. And if we did that, we'd have to take accountability for our actions and not blame each other for our selfish and stupid choices. Speaking of which, I really have to find an excuse to get out of marriage counseling with Rumple! I love Archie, but he blabs everyone's business all over town!"

"Well, he got his gift from the Blue Bitch and a Dark Curse created by Satan, so what do you expect?" huffed Tinkerbell. "But he is helping me with my kleptomania."

"Yeah, I remember that was a thing," recalled Neal. "You were always stealing from the dead bodies Pan left scattered around."

"Right! That's why I blew up the house," said Tinkerbell. "Archie said whenever I feel the urge to steal from the dead, I should create a distraction and channel that urge into something more productive!"

"Like almost killing us all?"

"Well, no, but I only just started therapy! I'm trying to transition to stealing from live people, but I'm just not used to being around them, so my skills are a bit rusty."

David came over from talking to a nurse and looked grim.

"Not good news?" asked Emma who'd been stuck burping Jermajesty after they remembered he'd been left behind at the Loft. Her brother had already barfed on her twice and let out a wet fart after which everyone shouted "NOT IT!" so she'd had to change his stupid poopy diaper. She seriously disliked her baby brother, even if he was like freakishly well-behaved and she did feel bad for him having parents like theirs raise him, which probably meant he'd turn out with serious psychological problems.

"Nothing definitive yet. Dr. Whale is taking her upstairs for some scans," he replied, taking a seat. "I did run into Elsa. She said they put Ingrid on anti-psychotics and she seems better. Archie's going to evaluate her later. She's on a 51/50."

"I guess we'll never know how much she hallucinated and how much that old fart bullshited," mused Ruby. "But how are we going to get those ice people home if the wardrobe is blown up and _not_ apparently destroy the universe?"

"Well, we'd still have that _one_ bean if _someone_ hadn't wasted it," Tinkerbell pointed out.

"Hey, I was just doing what Snow said!"

"We all need to stop doing that," groaned Belle.

"And that's assuming your pot-smoking didn't kill the plant!" pointed out Emma.

"You were smoking pot!?" exclaimed Regina.

"Why do you think I'm binging on Funyuns and ice cream? Duh!"

"It was Neal's idea!" Emma fingered him.

"It kept Henry from sneaking off and tasing his classmates and teachers," Neal argued. "And a bean would still threaten to break the universe!"

"True about my classmates. I hate most of them," conceded Henry. "I was totally going to burn down the school."

"We really need to have a talk about your school issues, Henry," sighed Regina. "You sounded so committed during your time in New York!"

"When I didn't have to worry about me and all you all possibly dying every week and all your stupid romance shit!" he snapped and slouched back in his chair eating Funyuns, then noticed something in Tinkerbell's pocket.

"Hey, isn't that the Apprentice's dick wand?"

The fairy tried to hide it, but with everyone now looking at her pulled it out. "Okay, fine, I nicked the old closed gay wizard's dildo wand, okay? So what?"

"It can create portals that are potentially less likely to destroy the universe," said Emma.

"Really? Then what the hell did he need a magical universe-cracking wardrobe for?"

"He probably stole it from Narnia... or whatever world is connected to Narnia via wardrobes," considered Belle. "Who cares? We have a way to get Anna and Elsa home without destroying Fairy Tale Land."

"Why do you assume _this_ world wouldn't be destroyed?" asked Regina. "And since when do we call our world 'Fairy Tale Land'."

"You remember what 'our world' was like, right?" scoffed Emma. "A cesspool of misogynist and racist cliches reinforced by magical stereotypes that's literally the basis for all classical fairy tales."

"She has a point," agreed Belle. "The Enchanted Forest was nearly destroyed by the Dark Curse. All of the magical blowback would go in that direction."

"Hey," suggested Henry, "we could send them using the dick wand aboard the _Jolly Roger_ with _him,_ " he fingered Hook, "and the dirty pirate can stay in the Enchanted Forest, so if the universes did try to merge, he'd be obliterated with it."

"Stop calling me dirty, brat!"

"Stop calling me a brat, slut!"

"I am not a slut!"

"You're a slut," Regina told Hook, "and nobody likes you."

"Yeah, well, the only one here who likes you is the kid who's brainwashed to like you - and that forest hobo."

"Where is Robin of Fucksley anyway?" asked Tinkerbell.

"Who cares about that idiot! My wife may be in a coma!" snapped David.

Dr. Whale approached then and everyone grew quite. "Well," he said, "your wife is in a coma. But apart from that, if she wakes up, she is going to suffer from a horrible degenerative process.

"Oooo, is that ice cream?"

"Get your own, you hack!" hissed Hook, holding close his gallon of rum raisin wrapped in gauze for insulation.

David punched him. "Stop being an insensitive asshole! _Both of you_!"

"Just an hour ago you were telling your wife what a stupid whore she was!" Hook reminded.

"Which doesn't mean I don't love her!"

"You of all people should know that calling someone a pathetic failure is romantic," scoffed Emma.

"Stop referencing stuff I don't remember, Swan!"

"So... back to Snow's tragic medical condition?" asked Belle with not-so-subtle roll of her eyes.

* * *

"I believe it's a combination of diseases," said Whale. "The first is syphilis."

"Syphilis!?" David exclaimed, horrified. "Where would Snow have gotten syphilis?" He looked angrily at Whale who held up his hands.

"I did not give your wife syphilis! The first outbreak I ever had was just weeks after sleeping with her. Apparently, she got it from her mother in-utero who got it from her mother who got it from-"

"YOU SONOFABITCH!" David shouted and pounced on Hook. "YOU GAVE MY WIFE SYPHILIS!"

Two orderlies had to pull the men apart.

"It's not my fault!" cried Hook. "I got it from Baelfire's mother! Milah shagged every solider in The Duke's army before I got to her!"

Neal shrugged and conceded, "Yeah, I can see that."

"Well, regardless of the origin," said Whale, "you, Mr. Nolan, should be tested. And your children. And all of Emma's sexual partners as even if the usual test results are currently negative, the disease can go dormant and require testing of spinal fluid for an accurate diagnosis..."

"Seriously!?" groaned Neal. "I might have gotten spyphilis from my own mother three hundred years and four generations removed?"

"Well, it would explain why you trusted Tamara! No account for August, though, unless it was seriously fast acting super syphilis!" snorted Emma.

"That's not a thing," said Whale. "But also, Mr. Nolan, you should make sure your fake wife and her husband are tested. And considering the rumors, Regina, that you tried to seduce Mr. Nolan, just in case he had any open soars that might have transmitted the disease, you should also be tested."

"I'm not Mayor. And _goddamn it, Snow_!" Regina growled.

"On the bright side, you might have given syphilis to Robin Hood!" chirped Tinkerbell.

"How is that good news? He's stupid enough without STD brain damage!"

"But I thought syphilis was curable with penicillin?" asked David. "How is Snow's condition degenerative and incurable?"

"Oh," nodded Whale, "well the syphilis is the least of her problems - assuming the cardiovascular damage isn't irreversible. It's rather hard to get a good read when half of her heart's magical electrical impulses - or however that shit works - is in you and thus gives a wonky reading. But on the neurological side, she also has CTE."

"CTE?" uttered Regina, befuddled. "What's that?"

"Chronic traumatic encephalopathy," piped up Belle and she shrugged at everyone's surprised and befuddled looks. "What? I spent a lot of my Sunday nights watching football because none of you assholes ever invited me to family dinners!"

"Wait, that concussion disease?" asked Emma.

"That's right," said Whale. "It's a a form of tauopathy, a progressive degenerative disease found in people who have suffered repetitive brain trauma. I suspect that the entirety of this town has some mild form of it due to the repeated magical memory loss which must have similar detrimental effects as physical injury, something I actually discussed with Mr. Gold who seems to agree that certain failsafes were likely not taken with the second and third castings of the Dark Curse, resulting in either permanent or magically sustained neurological damage.

"But in your wife's case," continued Whale, "magic or not, her symptoms are particularly bad due to her suffering repeated concussions over the course of her lifetime due to trusting villains who always bash her on the head, or running into dangerous situations where she gets thrown head-first into walls and boulders and such. And, of course, the neurosyphilis which also compromises brain tissues, and from my discussion with Doc and Dr. Hopper probably manifested around the time she drank that amnesia potion, which altered her brain chemistry and caused the spirochetes to come out of dormancy and began feasting away, which further compromised the connective tissue, making concessive injuries more severe. Either one would be bad, but both have left her comatose and, quite honestly, on the verge of brain death."

"Snow's going to die!?" David gasped.

"Well, her brain is on the way out," said Whale. "Even if she pulls through, she's past the stage of disorientation, dizziness, and headaches and on to progressive deterioration that includes memory loss, social instability, erratic behavior, and poor judgment. It's inevitable that she will progress to dementia, slowing of muscular movements, hypomimia, impeded speech, tremors, vertigo, deafness, and suicidality. Additional symptoms include dysarthria, dysphagia, ocular abnormalities, such as ptosis... which all big words for 'not good'. In short her brain is going to die."

"But... how can this be happening!?" David cried and looked at Emma. "Snow didn't die of this in that other timeline... right?"

Emma sighed. "The laws of physics and magic didn't always apply what with the universes coming undone. Plus, I changed things. How you met, which means other things might have changed, small enough, even just a head injury or something. Or maybe she got some magical treatment there, even unknowingly, that she didn't get if history wasn't changed. I know _there_ she was turned into a magical bug with that fairy dust instead of the trolls..."

"That could be it," mused Dr. Whale. "Dr. Hopper should be _much much_ older than he is, but being in bug form retarded his cellular degeneration and has caused minor changes in his DNA which I synthesized for a serum that slows decay after death to preserve organs for transplant as well as, possibly, allow patients suffering usually fatal accidents to survive with an injection in the field long enough to be put on by-pass and the organ damage repaired. It's quite genius, if I do say so!"

He cleared his throat. "Anyway, that brings me to Mary Margaret... er... Snow White. The only treatment, after a dose of penicillin to the spinal cord to flush those spirochetes completely out of her system is a brain transplant. And, well, possibly heart surgery depending on how replacing the other half of her heart goes."

"Seriously!?" Emma sputtered.

"Yes, seriously. Her brain is turning into a sponge. It will die. She'll either go in that coma or wake up and turn into a vegetable over the next ten years... assuming she doesn't suffer a massive and fatal heart attack from any lesions caused by the syphilis. But that, at least, may be curable with magic. Which is why I highly suggest re-fusing the two halves of her heart."

"But... then I won't have a heart!" said David. "I'll die. I mean... I would die for Snow again, but-"

"Technically," groaned Whale, "you _do_ have a heart. Pulling out a heart with magic only pulls out the heart's 'life force' as Regina calls it, but really it's a crystallization of the cardiovascular nerve network that receives electrical impulses from the brain to function. Without that, a heart is just a piece of dead meat and no amount of shocking it will work. So, you have a heart, it's just as though you suffered a massive coronary which left half of your heart paralyzed and unable to function, which outside of this town or another world with magic would cause you to drop dead immediately without some kind of magical pacemaker, and the same for your wife, since her half a heart can only supply enough electricity to beat with the magical amplification. And there's no guarantee that even with magic in this world that you wouldn't also die if she does."

"So... he needs a heart transplant?" Emma deduced.

"Yes, exactly. It's easier than trying to put someone else's particular electrical frequency into his heart, and frankly, the muscle damage may be too great even if that were possible, and magical meddling with the heart is a tricky business."

Whale amended, "Lucky for you and your wife, I have a supply of preserved hearts with my preserved brains thanks to the many peasants you all have completely ignored who died in your many magical catastrophes. So, if this experimental procedure works, you can live happily ever after knowing that some nameless peasant is looking down from somewhere telling you to fuck the hell off and die!"

"Still bitter much?" Emma asked the doctor.

"If you had to pay my malpractice insurance premiums, you would be too. So... are we good for the organ transplants? I can get everything ready by tonight. And in the meantime I'll give you a group rate on MRI's, spinal taps, and free donut pillows. And sign you up for a Pixie Dust Detox."

"A Pixie Dust Detox?"

"Well, it worked for the Lost Boys and Hook's former crew. Granted, in the former they're brains were probably partially stunted due to biochemical damage from the freakish growth-hormone-like rapid onset of puberty and in the later there was a lot of syphilis and alcohol damage, but inhaling that stuff is worse than snorting coke cut with rat poison, so cleaning out the fragments at least prevents further damage... and you all can use whatever help you can get to stave off brain damage, quite frankly."

Frowning, Emma demanded, "Why did you never tell me this in the other timeline, that my son's health was being compromised by pixie dust exposure!?"

Whale gave her an annoyed look and responded, "Well, since I was not part of that 'other timeline' I can only speculate that you were unconcerned by that your son had been infected... by enough puberty to make him age five years in a year and a half long story... due to extreme parental neglect in favor of sexytime with your pirate kin-"

"Wait, you know we're related!?" Emma exclaimed.

Now Whale rolled his eyes. "Of course, I have done full genetic testing on everyone I can get to attend a blood drive. Why do you think I do blood drives? That way, I can blackmail all of you sexually incestuous assholes. Speaking of which, because you were most likely also assholes there, that's probably why I didn't tell you that you were banging your great grand pappy and your son was turning into a hormone-boosted psycho like his Neverland pals. Well, that and I'm sure I got some interesting genetic information from all of the incest kids you lot are popping out."

"How many people in this town are having kids with blood relatives!?" Regina asked, horrified.

"Did you curse memory learn in school about the kingdoms of Europe during the later days of the Habsburg dynasty? It's a wonder half this town isn't chinless!"

Emma gave Henry a worried look and remarked, "That settles it. You're not even kissing a girl until I have a list of everyone in town you could possibly be related to. For all I know, it might have been for the best that the kid you raised was actually fathered by Hook. The girl might have been your first cousin!"

"Wait... Hook knocked up my future wife!?" Henry exclaimed and then turned around and socked Hook in the chest.

"Ahhhhhhhh! Mate, I didn't do anything!"

"To be fair," mused Neal, "Violet was a massive skank. Of course, she might have had some brain damage from Emma taking her heart and forcing her to do stuff. Not sure if that would be just straight brain damage from the mind control or secondary brain damage from blood flow or arythimia problems due to the whole magical heart/real heart incompatibility issues in this world of fucked up magic."

"Sounds probable," said Whale.

"You brain damaged my wife!?" Henry glared at Emma.

Surprisingly, Regina jumped to Emma's defense - sort of - with a scathing, " _You brain damaged yourself and the rest of us with pixie dust trying to be a hero_ , never mind taking out your heart and putting it in Pan and who knows what that did to you! So don't you blame anyone but yourself - and possibly your idiot grandparents - for that massively arrogant ego, Henry Daniel Mills!"

"Damn right, Kid," Emma agreed, amending, "And she was already messed up from all that Avalon dust, so, you know..."

"Oh, and the evil chive-roses that grow unnaturally in winter," piped up Hook, "and are supposed to have even crazier effects than the pixie dust flowers that Emma says we all inhaled lots of in Camelot in that other timeline because King Farther put them everywhere to reinforce the magic of his fancy sand."

"Yes, probably that too," agreed Whale. "Your world is just full of brain-damaging magic. It's a wonder you all can walk and chew gum at the same time."

"Also," amended Emma, "you only liked her because her mom was dead and she wanted to rebel against her father who thought heroes had to be dragon slayers. You had nothing in common."

"Like you and Pirate Slut? Maybe I was emulating you," Henry argued and nodded at Regina, "and, you know, Mom and her pine-scented boy toy."

David let out a sigh and interrupted the argument to tell Whale, "Whatever it takes, Doctor. Just save my wife."

"Awesome!" Whale beamed and skipped away.

Once he was around the corner by the vending machines he did a victory dance. "Best. Day. Ever!"

"You're a freak, you know that," said Tinkerbell from where she was eating gummie bears away from the crazy family arguing about stuff that hadn't happened.

"You're a freak with a Pixie Dust addiction," Whale shot back.

"Who clued you into that shit in the first place and hasn't had any P-Dust in a year!"

"A year?"

"Okay, so I lied about why the Blue Fairy kicked me out," said Tink, rolling her eyes. "She found out I was using the stash in the Enchanted Forest and brought back as much as I could and was hiding it in one of the confessionals. But no one ever goes in those!"

Whale rolled his eyes. "How much have you sold?"

"Half of it to the Merry Men. I mean, you gotta feel for them. They came to this world with no knowledge, money, or prospects. They're worse off than most hobos. And now that Robin might be cut off from the ex-Mayoral welfare train to spread around the wealth..."

Scowling, Tink concluded, "Scarlet stole the other half and gave it Anton who used it as fucking fertilizer for his hash!"

"Hmm, no wonder it's such good shit," said Whale.

"Yeah, well, do you needed help procuring bodies or organs for your creepy mad scientist experience? Because I could totally get into that now that my Dust run is over."

Whale narrowed his eyes. "Is that Emma's necklace?"

"What!?" Tinkerbell sputtered and grabbed the pendant. "No! It's a butterfly!"

"Pretty sure you put some glamour spell on it just now with that wooden dildo."

The ex-fairy glared. "Fine, I lifted Emma's stupid swan necklace using a closeted gay wizard's phallic-shaped magic device, okay?" she griped, yanking it off and handing it to the doctor. "Do you want help with your necromancy shit or what?"

Whale considered a moment, then asked, "That depends. Can you use that wooden cock for surgery?"

* * *

AN: _iZombie_ feels! The line about Henry's freak puberty is from Honest Trailers: The Walking Dead about Carl. CTE was first diagnosed as a disease in NFL players due to repeated violent head trauma, but exists in other sports that have frequent high impact head injuries... something Snow White seems to have suffered a lot of in her lifetime. Congenital neurosyphilis is real. I've taken liberties with both, but what the hell? Who knows how the introduction of magic would affected real medical problems? (Also, dude, why the fuck _did_ that wand look like a wooden penis with shriveled balls?)

Next up: Off with Snow White's head!


	54. Off With Her Head!

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE**

 **OFF WITH HER HEAD!**

David gave his wife's hand a squeeze as she was prepped for surgery. Emma had done her thing with the dreamcatcher (and Ingrid's memory stones just to be safe) and all that was left was the medical part.

"This will work, Snow. I love you. You're spirit, your soul. And I know you'll love me too, no matter who's heart I have. You loved the heart of a nameless peasant before..."

"Blah blah blah," Nurse Ratched harumphed. "We all know you'd love her even if she had staples on her forehead and bolts in my neck. Stop making me nauseous with your sappy claptrap and get back in your bed!"

"You'd better listen to her, mate," said Hook, "or you might wake up arse-raped!"

"Why is he here!?" David hissed at his gathered family.

"He has Mom's blood type," said Emma with a grimace as she shifted on her hot pink donut pillow and tried not to feel so dizzy she was going to throw up, "and we figure if any of her other organs fail, we can just kill him and use his."

"Hey! I did not agree to that!"

There was a knock on the door and Dr. Frankenstein entered. Seriously, he was in full-on creepy mad scientist threads and declared, "Okay, let's get you two to my completely non-FDA-approved basement laboratory! I've got the tesla coil all charged up and Happy has agreed to play Igor!"

"Why would he do that?" asked Regina with a scoff and Whale shrugged.

"I provide him with medical marijuana for his depression."

"Wait... Happy suffers from depression?" asked David, startled.

"Ironic, right? Anyway, it's go time! Muahahahaha-eh- _cough_ ," said Whale. "Please disregard the evil laughter."

Tinkerbell exclaimed, "All right! Off with her head!"

"Why is _she_ still here?" growled David.

Emma shrugged and said, "I think she and Ruby are dating. Or just getting drunk and clubbing together. I'm not sure. Anyway, if this heart transplant thing doesn't work, I'll totally rip out Hook's and give you his, which is obviously used and damaged, but just to tide you over until we can find a better one!"

"HEY!" Hook cried. "Stop trying to steal my organs!"

"You _do_ have nice eyes," observed Tinkerbell, giving him a very creepy inspection.

"Stop weirding me out, devil fairy!"

* * *

"Junior Mint?" Neal asked Emma as he sat in the observation room on his own hot pink donut pillow. Why the basement laboratory had an observation balcony was pretty nonsensical, but who cared? This was kind of cool... aside from the back pain, vertigo, and fever caused by getting a huge needle stuck in the base of his spine to determine if his teenage lover had given him an STD in a motel room over a decade ago. At least Emma had to get one too lest she to explain the whole dead-divine-STD-curing-intervention thing.

There was crazy shit like magic and demon swords and then there was _crazy shit_ like talking to angels in your bedroom.

"I already said _'no_ '," harumphed Emma, fighting a headache.

"I'll have one!" said Hook, the only one spared the STD testing, since he'd gotten the full routine last time around.

"You already ate a gallon of ice cream and you're the only one who didn't have a medical procedure!"

"All of you shut up!" snapped Ruby, who had to get tested because she was a slut under the Curse and had probably slept with someone who'd slept with someone who slept with Hook... or they'd just slept with Hook since she was kind of bisexual even if she hadn't told anyone but Tinkerbell. "My friends could die down there."

"I thought you hated them for being shitty friends?" said Emma.

"I do and they are but that doesn't mean I want them dead! I mean, I'm still stuck as your godmother! I don't want that responsibility!"

"I'm a grown woman!"

"With the emotional development of a fifteen year old slut! If you and Neal and Regina all die, that means I have to take care of Henry or something and he's clearly disturbed!"

"I am not disturbed!"

"Oh no!" gasped Belle who angrily had to get tested because Regina made Lacy a bigger slut than Ruby, "I shouldn't have signed that paperwork! If they die I have to take care of their kid with the stupid name!"

She shouted down to the medical team, "DON'T LET THEM DIE! I CAN'T BE SADDLED WITH THE STATISTICALLY STUPID SPAWN OF TWO IDIOTS!"

* * *

Down bellow Dr. Whale and his team of malcontent mostly fake healthcare workers who made ends meet selling pharmaceuticals off the books and the occasional body-stealing-replace-it-with-a-transfigured-log scheme worked with remarkable precision to carry out their mad boss' plan.

Exactly what was going on wasn't entirely clear to those watching, but there was a mix of weird machines and Tinkerbell was there waving the Apprentice's penis-and-balls wand. There was fairy dust and some glowing stuff that was either a potion or a crazy drug. Then David had his chest cut open and Snow had the top of her head lopped off.

Tinkerbell used magic to remove the half of Snow's heart from both soulmates, put the two halves back together, and then set the glowy thing aside while both were on by-pass and that slow-decay stuff Whale had invented, since if a heart was magically alive when it was removed, a person couldn't completely die from other natural causes... or something... which was how Cora had a zombie army... or something.

Whale then examined David's actual physical heart, which was dead, beyond any help to restart the electrical impulses using science since its magical electrical essence - or something - had been crushed weeks ago. It basically transformed instantly into an atrophied lump after Snow's love magic shit was removed from it.

Whale threw it in the trash bin.

"Heart?" he asked and Ratched handed him a bloody organ which he quickly sutured into place.

"Magical heart?"

Tinkerbell brought over a glowy heart. "You're sure this will work?"

"They are soulmates. It should be compatible by some bullshit magical laws from what Belle tells me."

"All right then!"

Whale shoved the magical heart in, Tinkerbell zapped it with the dick wand, and David's new ticker started beating.

The two fist-bumped success while Ratched scowled in disapproval.

"It's four-twenty. Can we take a break?" asked Happy.

"We have to do Snow White's brain first. Snow White's brain and then I'll break out the good stash that Anton brought in last week to celebrate," Whale told him.

"When you put her memories back," the Dwarf considered, "can you make it so she treats us better? I mean, she totally uses us like we're undocumented immigrants and she's a skeezy small business owner who won't even give us health insurance. Also, do you think we can sue her now that she's Mayor to get health insurance and mine safety regulations?"

"I think that's a question for Regina, Happy."

From the viewing balcony, Regina shrugged and responded, " _Why the hell not? Sue her ass, what do I care?_

"Pass me one of those mints, Person," she directed at Neal.

"Stop calling me that!" Neal growled.

" _Shut up the both of you_!" Whale directed at them. " _Also, your test results came back. Good news, you don't have syphilis, but you are half-siblings_!"

"WHAT!?" both of them shouted and a Junior Mint went flying and into David's chest, unnoticed by the intern who was suturing him up.

"I WAS KIDDING!" exclaimed the doctor. "Do you know how long it takes to get DNA test results? I still don't have the syphilis tests back! This isn't CSI! Seriously, though, I have fifty bucks says Gold was all up in Cora with his scaly-"

"SHUT UP SHUT UP!" Regina cried. "I AM NOT RELATED TO ANY OF YOU!"

She ran out of the gallery.

"So... you could be related to my murderous step grandmother?" Emma uttered with raised brows at Neal.

"Ugh. And I have to do family trees next week for school!" moaned Henry. "Can I just write 'INCESTUOUSLY FUCKED UP' and get a free pass?"

"Language," Emma and Neal scolded.

Henry harumphed and went back to eating his Funyuns.

"How long does it take to replace a brain? Bloody hell," complained Hook.

"I dunno, maybe Whale can replace yours next," said Neal.

"Just share the bloody Junior Mints, _Neal_."

* * *

Brain surgery took forever it turned out. A loud electrical crackling and a bright flash of bluish-white light awoke those who'd tried to stay for the procedure.

"THEY'RE ALIVE! THEY'RE ALIVE!" Whale was cackling madly over the two operating tables.

"Why is my mother wearing that wig?" asked Emma. "And are those bolts?"

"YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR!" Tinkerbell shouted back before removing the Bride of Frankenstein wig from Snow White's bandaged head and the stick-on Halloween bolts from David's neck.

The couple was then taken up to recovery for the anesthesia to wear off. Of course, David was the first to wake since his wife was being kept sedated until some scans could be done to assess her brain's blood flow and electrical activity.

"Did it... work?" David groggily asked.

"Well, you're both alive. Mom is still sedated," replied Emma. "Do you want to see her?"

* * *

In the back of Gold's pawnshop, after some drinking and Prozac, Regina stood over the magically comatose ex-Imp and grumbled, "Wake up and tell me you didn't shag my mother, Rumplestiltskin!"

* * *

AN: Are Neal and Regina related? You decide! (Who's gonna turn down a Junior Mint? It's chocolate, it's peppermint, it's delicious.)

Next up: Surgical... success?


	55. Scarecrow and Mr King

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to All Readers:** **So, I now have 2 votes for a Neal/Regina relation and 1 vote against. Everyone, please vote in your reviews!**

 **Note to Mir:** **I'm not sure 'brilliant' will be the final conses. I hadn't even thought about Happy's pick-axe name having changed, but you're right, it should have! Maybe it would be 'Mopey'? He's been hiding his depression from everyone but the other Dwarfs, though. Well, the Junior Mint had no effect in the _Seinfeld_ episode in the end. It may or may not have some ill-effect here. As to Regina's paternity, Lana is Hispanic, so some magic done by Cora would have to explain why she isn't white as rice. Of course, I already did that with Lily, so it's possible! I understand what you're saying about Henry Sr., but just because that would make his life even more tragic is no reason not to do it, and who's to say he wouldn't have known and still raised Regina anyway in the hopes that he could break her free of Cora... not that he ended up trying very hard! Honestly, Henry Sr. was a very spineless character from the start who ended up essentially an emotionally and psychologically battered spouse who was so traumatized by Cora that he ended up Regina's valet and assassin. I don't have a great deal of sympathy for Prince Henry.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY**

 **SCARECROW AND MR. KING**

David sat impatiently waiting for his beloved to wake. No True Love's Kiss was going to revive her this time. In fact, it seemed that the many instances requiring said magical remedy had led them to this point, Snow's brain so damaged that it was beyond repair.

So had been his heart.

Should he feel different? He wasn't sure. When he'd appeared in this world (again) with his shockingly pregnant wife, he hadn't any memories of what had happened and no idea that his heart had been crushed and replaced with half of Snow's.

Which, really, when you thought about it, was as ludicrous a thing to not know as being _heartless_ or the Dark One. Not that he would ever want to admit being as clueless about something as Hook. Frankly, that Dark One thing still baffled him, and it made him ill to think that Emma had been _married_ to that creep without even factoring in the incest.

He _had_ suffered from nightmares, though, which he now knew were of the afterlife... or rather being ripped out of the peacefulness of the afterlife. While David understood his wife's motivations and that they were tied to her illness, it was still something he was going to have to stop ignoring and deal with: the whole having been dead and ripped out of Heaven thing... or being on his way to Heaven, technically, but it was still more chill than this miserable plain of existence.

Probably, he should talk to Emma and/or Neal about that, even if he disliked admitting weakness to his daughter and just disliked Neal on principal.

"We need to do a better job with our second-born," David spoke rather grimly to his wife. "I know we screwed Emma up by not being there for her and making choices that led to us not being there for her and her path being even harder because of magic... but we haven't exactly started out with the best track-record the second time. I mean, our son might well have lost his magic to Zelena's spell and nearly lost his life. We didn't even name him properly - _twice_. I don't know... do you think maybe we're just not cut out to have kids?"

"That's entirely possible," said Archie as he finished setting a flower arrangement on the dresser. "But I only came here to access Snow's psychological state. If you want an actual session, I have an opening on Thursday at two. Also, AA meetings are on Fridays at seven. I would highly recommend joining sooner rather than later. We have more alcoholics than sponsors and Leroy is always on the verge of falling off the wagon and cashing in his chips."

"I'm not an alcoholic," David argued. "I just drink to alleviate the agony of being forced back into a mortal existence."

"Your liver function test would disagree with you. Emma is going to be there. Possibly Hook, though it might just be to try and pick up an emotionally vulnerable woman for sex. I'm still working on convincing Regina that her three glasses of wine a night is not normal antisocial drinking."

"Yeah, but if it keeps her from killing everyone..."

Snow groaned then, putting an end to the conversation.

While Dr. Hopper paged Dr. Whale, David squeezed his wife's hand. "Snow? Snow, it's me, wake up, sweetheart."

Her eyelids fluttered and it took a moment for her to focus, but Snow then peered at him, groggy and a bit confused. "David, what... happened?"

"You had something of an... accident," Archie interjected. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Um... Emma brought back some friends of David's to the Loft... I think... we left our son with them?" She frowned, trying hard to remember. "Did we... have a fight?"

"Sort of," said David. "The Snow Queen cast the Curse of Shattered Sight. It made us all pretty angry with one another. You hit your head during the... well... melee. Emma seemed to heal you with magic, but you complained of head pain and then collapsed later that night."

"It was an extremely severe concussion," interjected Dr. Whale, coming into the room with a chart. "I'll spare you the medical jargon for the time-being, but suffice it to say that thirty-odd years of repeated concussions and whatever additional trauma you might have suffered regularly during the years of Curse combined with what is most likely synaptic damage caused by repeated memory spells and their reversal, the most recent episode being that idiot book we got stuck in with completely different lives and personalities, plus heart removal in a world not particularly compatible with such magic and the physical damage caused by syphilis which you contracted from your mother during pregnancy and has gone through intermittent periods of infectiousness, destroying brain tissue, culminated in you falling into a coma and being on the verge of brain death. There was a small chance you would wake up, but with degenerative and irreversible brain damage, and so your husband made the decision to proceed with a brain transplant."

Snow stared at the doctor for close to a minute, then exclaimed, "YOUR REPLACED MY BRAIN!?"

"Honey, there really wasn't a choice," said David. "Emma saved all of your memories. And there's an added bonus. You have your whole heart back. Dr. Whale did a heart transplant for me, magic-intact and everything, so now we don't have to worry about orphaning our son if one of us is fatally wounded... not that we've been the best parents, granted, but now that you have a fully functional brain and we both have whole hearts, we should be better at this."

"YOU REPLACED MY BRAIN!?"

"Hmm, you're not stuck in a loop, are you?" asked Dr. Hopper.

Snow glared at him. "I'll stick something in your loop! You agreed to this!?"

"Well, I wasn't consulted to be quite frank, but it does seem the only option short of dangerous dark magic. And Dr. Whale does seem quite competent at preserving organ tissue while Tinkerbell used The Apprentice's super powerful and oddly phallic wand to ensure David's new heart is functional and that the memories Emma pulled into a dreamcatcher and backed up in Ingrid's memory stones just in case were properly implanted in your new brain. Really, it's a fascinating mix of medicine and magic!"

"Thank you, Dr. Hopper!" beamed Dr. Whale. "Now, I know this is shocking, but if you could answer some questions and proceed with a simple flashcard test to ensure everything is working as it should..."

* * *

The test took several hours, and Snow was exhausted. She honestly didn't know if she'd gotten all of the answers right, and David didn't seem certain on a number of things.

It was shocking, demoralizing, and unsettling to learn that, for years now, she had apparently been exhibiting delusional behavior, but David had at first ignored and tried to dismiss it, and then just quietly lived with her forgetting this, "making shit up that never happened", or really alarming stuff like thinking it was her middle-of-the-winter birthday in March; he'd even gotten Johanna to play along, which had backfired horribly because _she'd_ messed things up with Cora.

How many people had been hurt, or worse died, because she was _brain damaged_?

And how many people were infected with _syphilis_ because of her?

Snow felt so stupid for not even knowing she was sick _with a pirate and prostitute disease!_

She was just a kid when she got that weird soar on her 'private lady parts' and never told anyone. It healed up in a few weeks. She, of course, being eleven years old, never connected the full-body rash, lesions, and flu-like symptoms that followed a few months later: the castle's healer had diagnosed her with Dragon Pox! And, of course, her mother was dead by then, and Eva had probably never told anyone about _her_ illness if she herself had ever even figured it out since it was also congenital.

And that stupid old book from the Library never covered pregnancy with syphilis either!

Maybe if she'd gone to Dr. Whale instead of Zelena for her prenatal care, she would have been diagnosed and she'd have gotten treatment for both herself and her unborn son. But, of course, she didn't know she had syphilis. So now her son could suffer multiple organ problems along with vision, hearing bone marrow, liver, skin, and heart. He already, apparently, had a heart murmur and though it wasn't severe and Dr. Whale didn't think it would be a problem, it was probably her fault!

And _Emma._ She didn't have the disease now, but she also said she _had_ had it and been treated in New York. She'd thought afterward she got it from Hook, until now. And her brain scan did show some damage in the pleasure center of her brain, so it could be why she was kind of a sexual deviant; her brain was just messed up as a kid and didn't develop right!

Well, and the pixie dust. At least having a new brain now she didn't have to worry about that, Snow supposed.

And Henry, at least, had been spared. The disease was, thankfully, either dormant in Emma when she was pregnant with him or the prison doctors just dosed all the pregnant inmates with penicillin.

David had contracted it, though. It seemed that being in a coma kept it dormant, but it had left him with some minor impairment and was potentially the cause of his rage incidents since the Curse broke... unless he was just in denial about shit he shared with his brother... although, all things considered, James probably got syphilis from his slutty mistress!

Snow wanted to cry.

But the fancy neck-brace that was screwed into her head made it hard to reach over for the box of Kleenex, so instead she focused on her anger.

She just wanted to rip out someone's heart and crush it!

Which was completely illogical and she never got that angry, but suddenly she knew what all of the villains felt like when they insisted that their lives were messed up and they'd hurt people because their parents or ancestors screwed them over unfairly.

She could probably find some magical means to rip out Hook's heart, but much as she loathed him, she didn't want to follow in his or Regina's kin-killing footsteps. Sure, she'd killed Cora, but they weren't blood related...

There was a knock on the door and Emma entered, walking a bit stiff and carrying some cups from Granny's.

"Hot chocolate with cinnamon," she said. "I thought it might help."

Snow smiled and took a cup. "We haven't shared hot chocolate in ages."

"I know," Emma sighed. "To be honest, we completely stopped in that other timeline. I was into Irished-up coffee and you... I don't really know. We stopped hanging out."

"Can I ask why?"

Emma shrugged. "You had a baby. I had... a pirate. I bought my own house. Had my own family. Henry outgrew hot chocolate and moved on to coffee and Red Bull. And I just don't think I ever really thought about it much. Maybe it was a soul thing. Maybe it just hurt too much, like I stopped doing and talking about stuff I used to love that reminded me of Neal..."

"Because you didn't feel like we were friends anymore," Snow said, suddenly remembering a flash of their fight in the Sheriff's Station. "Emma..."

"We're not, though, that's the thing," Emma sighed, frustrated. "We were never friends, not really. I was friends with an impostor, who's not really you, and then you just went full mom-zilla on me, and when that backfired with you pretty much choosing to abandon me in Neverland with that speech about what a disappointment I was and wanting a new baby and then you showing up nine months pregnant less than a year later and the revelation about that spell... I still loved you guys, or I wanted to, but it was more 'I'm obligated to because they're my parents' than any real connection."

While Snow looked sad to hear this, Emma shrugged and amended, "I don't resent that you have another child, not really. I'm happy for you, that you get to have those experiences we didn't get to have. But it does hurt that we didn't have them. Like it hurts Regina had them with Henry and I never can have that, not even with fake memories, which actually make it more painful, because I know they're fake and Regina-ish and when I think about it, in that other timeline, I kind of became Regina-ish in how I parented Henry and the..." she winced, "child I had with Hook. I did that even though in this one _I hated_ how Regina parented him. I used him and neglected him... and I raised a child to become a monster because of more selfish choices.

"And... sometimes, to be honest," Emma admitted, "it feels like you and Dad did that to me."

"Emma..." Snow uttered, dismayed.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," she assured, "but it feels like you had this one moment, when you jumped through that hat after me when you really wanted to try being my mother, but then after a month together, you realized that you didn't really like me that much, and then what you said in the Echo Caves and _then_ finding out you tried to make me a perfect daughter because you couldn't stand the thought of me making any bad choices on my own... and knowing how that completely backfired and I grew up to be a horrible person who _became the Dark One_..."

Snow let out a breath. "Emma, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you're not the daughter I envisioned, but I'm more sorry that I've been unable to accept you and love you for who you are... or try to help you be a better person instead of just... going along with what makes you happy in the hopes that being supportive is the kind of parenting you need if you don't want advice. I was more concerned with how motherhood would affect me, reflect on me, than what was best for you, letting you make your own mistakes as I did.

"I promise, no more advice."

"It's not that I don't want advice, I just don't want hypocritical bullshit," Emma told her with a shake of her head. "And I _really_ don't want you guys going along with me doing stupid stuff. It's hard to respect you guys when you only have two settings: Condescending Advice and Enabling Dumb Choices. You guys just... ream into me when that's the last thing I need and then pat me on the head and tell me what a good job I'm doing when I'm fucking up my life. I want parents who accept that I'm a grown woman who's had experiences as powerful as theirs - but who also get that I got screwed up as a kid and sometimes that means I don't learn the right lessons from those experiences."

Frowning, Snow said, "And that's why we drifted apart. Because I failed at both of those."

"Well... kind of, yeah," sighed Emma. "Between your crappy excuses for that spell and squeeing over my dressing up like a character in _Grease_ for a creepy date with Hook, I couldn't exactly bond with you about anything anymore. I mean, you failed at being my mom before I was even born - and I get that I did that with Henry - but it hurts. And Hook basically stalked and harassed me into a relationship and then used me, lied to me, and insulted me, and tried to kill us all, but you were just 'if he makes you happy then it must be true love'.

"But it wasn't! I was so afraid of losing his undivided attention that I risked everything and ruined relationships with my family for him because I had more faith that he'd never leave me or be disappointed in me enough to not want me, even if it was a shallow and obsessive wanting me, than I did you guys or Henry. I never had to be a hero or The Savior for him, just... a pretty pirate wench replacement that he use to feel good about himself. I had to be so much... better for you guys. I had to be _perfect_ even when you weren't..."

"Emma, you don't have to be perfect!" Snow told her sadly.

"I do. For everyone," sighed Emma just as there was another knock on the door and David came in.

Emma gave him a tight smile before saying she had to get back to the station.

After she'd gone, Snow sniffed and wiped at her eyes.

"Snow?"

"I've been such a bad mother, David," she exhaled. "Just having Emma should have been enough. This is all my fault."

Sitting at her beside, David squeezed her hand. "There's still time to fix things, Snow. It's never too late."

"I hope you're right."

* * *

AN: If you're wondering about the chapter title, _Scarecrow and_ was a television show in the 1980's; I thought it would be punny, since Snow White lost her brain and heart-snatched David is a quasi-king. Snow not liking Emma... I can't really see how Snow would like her, to be honest, considering she disapproved of so much about Emma from Day One and her only attempts at parenting were condescending advice delivered like a sanctimonious harpy until she completely gave up trying to point out Emma's flaws and heal her damaged emotional state, and just went along with Emma's latest teenage crush after the time travel fuckery and decided to re-envision Emma like the teenager her behavior emulated and make fake "mother/daughter first boyfriend/date" memories because if Zelena's spell resulted in combining their love stories, then why not just go along with Emma loving the pervert who threatened to rape her after leaving her for dead? Maybe they had a connection under the Curse and could have ended up friends if that had gone on longer, Emma healing more, Mary Margaret earning her trust and learning what screwed up childhood shit really made Emma like that. But they didn't get that chance. I see Snow's declaration about unhappy motherhood and that she doesn't like Emma akin to Alicia on _The Good Wife_ lamenting, was her life just supposed to be bringing up two kids that she isn't sure she even likes anymore? The way Snow is with parenting, it's like she so desperately wanted to be a mother because she didn't have one, but then she realized she didn't like her adult daughter, so she thought trying again from scratch would work, but it turned out that whatever void she thought a baby would fill didn't, because she can't bring back her mother or replicate that bond from the child's side through the experiences of a mother. She's failed to form a mother/child bond with both of her children because she wants to be the child in the relationship... which further explains her spoiled brat approach to "parenting".

Next up: Emma's not handling things so well.


	56. The Cursing Way

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-ONE**

 **THE CURSING WAY**

"Ah, good! You're all here! Disrobe and put these on!" said the sturdy Native American man gesturing to amulets hung a tree beside a large pine-bow covered hut with steam coming out the top.

"Hold on, we have _to get naked_?" squeaked Emma.

"Yeeeeaaaaah, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that," said David with an uneasy glance at a horrified Emma.

"I am SO not comfortable with any of this!" wailed Henry.

"Why didn't you say we had to take our clothes off!?" Emma accused Hook who didn't even attempt to look guilty.

"What? These folk," he gestured to the Shaman, "have always got their wenches walking around topless. It goes without saying, luv."

"It does _not_ go without saying and there's a difference between topless and _naked_ , neither of which you are going to see, you sicko!"

"It is in the standard disclosure agreement that Dr. Whale had you sign," interjected the Shaman while checking something on his i-Phone. "Did none of you read it?"

All eyes turned to Regina who rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, you all expected _me_ to be the _only one_ to read it? What, because I was the mayor?"

"No, because you're anal retentive and hate people intruding on your personable business," Emma corrected.

"Well, excuse me, but I was too busy cleaning up the administrative clusterfuck 'Mary Margaret' left before _and after_ cracking her head open," Regina argued, then gave the Shaman a suspicious look.

"Aren't you a mental patient?"

"Aren't you the _former_ evil witch who decided I should be locked up there for objecting to you occupying my people's land after which you massacred them for treason?"

While Regina looked uncomfortable, Emma frowned at her and demanded, "How many groups of people have you massacred, Regina?"

"Personally? I killed a few people here and there, but it's not like I carried out _massacres_ myself," scoffed Regina.

"Yes, let's put you on a twenty dollar bill, Your Majesty," snarked the Shaman.

"You really ordered the genocide of people, Mom?" asked Henry, wide-eyed.

"Of course not! I never killed anyone for racist reasons, just for not thinking I was pretty or good," Regina stated, as if that made her better... which maybe it did _slightly_.

Emma cut in with a warning look at Henry, "You'd better not pull the 'You're not a villain, you're my mommy and you can do no wrong and I love you shit, Kid, because ordering mass murder is some serious crap, _Regina_ ," she glared at her son's other mother, "that you had better realize can't be absolved by your selfish love for the fraudulently adopted kid you only got because you fucked up my life and some twist of magic didn't want him raised by Pan into a psychopath who would have mass murdered us all."

"I didn't realize this was a group therapy session as well," Regina grumbled. "Perhaps you'd like to rehash all of the villainous things you did that other timeline for which _this person_ ," she jabbed a thumb toward Neal, "thinks you're too vile to re-shack up with."

"Stop calling me 'this person'!" Neal growled. "Are you seriously just trying to be a bitch or what, Regina?"

"Names have power," stated the Shaman, "and she is afraid to use your name and give you power in the complicated relationship with the child you share as in our world biological ties are everything and adoptions are all secret and fraudulent because no child without a blood relation can inherit anything due to arcane beliefs in divine rights of rulership passed down in semen which are, of course," he rolled his eyes, "tiny little people who are implanted in the otherwise useless vessels that are women. You make her useless."

"I am not useless!" Regina snapped at the Shaman while conjuring a fireball.

"No magic, mom!" Henry exclaimed. "And you're not useless, just... Emma's kind of right that you need to take responsibility for all of your murdering instead of blaming my grandmothers and believing Robin's twenty-nine-years-without-sex-meeting-you-in-a-low-cut-corset inspired monologue that you're not that homicidal personal anymore and champion of puppies and kittens and rainbows."

Regina harumphed. "Yes, well, _pixie dust_."

0"Yes, well, you got dosed by Tinkerbell long before I doubled it, Mom!" Henry pointed out.

"And I should be commended for not jumping Robin like a rabbit in heat then. My grief of lost love was enough to keep my legs crossed, which is more than I can say for Emma who stuck her tongue down Guyliner's throat five minutes after your father kicked it."

"Thanks so much for that reminder, Regina," grumbled Neal while throwing a glowering look at Emma who threw a 'stop trying to ruin this for me' look at Regina who threw a 'you ruined things with Robin first' look at her.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" interjected a dubious David.

"One hundred percent satisfaction or your money back," the Shaman stated.

Shrugging, Hook added, "Smee said he and my former crew did it last month and it was better than something called a 'cleanse'."

"That's rich people talk for an enema," said Neal.

Hook's eyes widened and he started to back away. "Oh, no, you are not violating my arse, Chief!"

"It's a cleansing of the soul, not the colon, you idiot! And stop using my Curse name!"

"It is kinda racist," agreed Neal. "I mean, I get the _Cuckoo's Nest_ reference, but still-"

"Yeah, it's pretty racist," nodded Emma with a look toward Regina.

"I didn't design the Curse! It was Satan and that racist sorcerer working for but really against Merlin!"

"Yes, so I understand," said Not-Cheif. "It's a pity that fairy blew up his house or I would have collected his scalp."

"Isn't that perpetuating an outdated stereotype?" asked David.

"No, I collect the scalps of dead magical people and use their hair to create potions to combat male pattern baldness, a tragic affliction to which my people became immune long ago because of our magical scalp processing and cannibalism."

"You accuse me of villainy yet you _ate_ wizards?" Regina shuddered.

"You can cure my balding!?" squeed Hook and started pulling off his clothes as quickly as possible.

"Good Christ your ass is blindingly white!" guffawed David.

"Shut up! At least I have one!"

"More than you should after all that ice cream," sniggered Neal.

"Please tell me you have gender segregated sweat lodges?" pleaded Regina.

"No, just the one," said Not-Chief. "And as you are all magically bound together by the same dispersion of pixie dust, effects of which were amplified and the bonds reinforced by your emotional turmoil in Neverland, this must be a group cleansing!"

"This is all your fault!" Regina directed at Henry. "I love you, but damn it, you are so gullible sometimes, Henry!"

"I was eleven! And no one told me that Peter Pan was evil!" he said, glaring at Neal.

"Yeah, okay, my bad..."

"I can't unsee that," moaned Emma as Hook began doing stretches while adjusting his amulet.

"You already saw _that_ ," Neal reminded.

"Not with twenty extra pounds of butter fat and in broad daylight _and knowing we're related_! God, I'd almost managed to forget how even more unattractive uncircumcised penises are than circumcised ones. And his particular style of... manscaping."

"Yeah, it's weird," said Henry, "that he's so in love with his head hair and chest hair but he goes full Brazilian down there..."

"It's not weird! I wore leather pants in the tropics for three hundred years. It got very hot and sweaty around my bits!"

"I suppose I can see that," grumbled Regina. "A week in that jungle in a polyester suit and I had the worst yeast infection of my life."

"THERAPY!" Henry cried and grabbed a talisman before running into the hut fully clothed.

"DON'T YOU RUN AWAY FROM ME, HENRY DANIEL MILLS! YOU WILL TELL ME HOW YOU KNOW WHAT A 'FULL BRAZILIAN' IS!" demanded Regina, following.

"Yeah, that's... a weird thing for a twelve year old to know," said David, looking around rather shiftily and hurrying after the pair.

"I didn't need to know that my father knows what that is," groaned Emma. "And I am not going to ask why it came up in some capacity that involved Henry or I will _definitely_ need therapy after walking in on my parents."

"Taco Tuesday?" sniggered Neal.

"How do you even-"

"Henry told me. On account of him not knowing what sex is and being traumatized after the fact by the realization that he took naps in Snow White's bed."

"Yeah, I had the same post-Curse-breaking trauma realization," sighed Emma and looked at the hut. "Shall we?"

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Hook was happily lounging in the sauna while the others were scowling miserably in sweat-soaked clothes, what with having dressed for the cold weather and thus having very little other than coats, sweaters, and socks that could be removed without being down to their underwear.

"It's funny," Hook was saying, "that we were always going around searching for treasure, and we never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories we were creating."

"Oh. My. God. Shut up about your pirate days!" Neal growled and threw the water bucket ladle at him.

"You wouldn't be so grumpy if you took off your hobo clothes, Nealfire."

"I do not wear 'hobo clothes'."

Regina considered, "He's right. Robin wears hobo clothes. His are more like thrift store dollar rack clothes."

"They are not from the dollar rack," Neal harumphed.

"Seriously, Neal," Emma groaned while trying to tie her wet ponytail into a bun, "you need to buy some new clothes. You didn't actually wear thrift store stuff to your job interview, did you?"

Neal frowned. " _No_. I had a sweet three piece suit from Sacks Fifth Avenue. That _Robin_ threw in the garbage!"

"Why the hell would that idiot throw away an expensive suit that could have gotten him a real job!?" huffed Regina.

"Or, you know, that I could have been buried in if anyone had given a damn about that. Thanks for waiting two months to clear out my apartment, and a month after the squatter you gave my keys to threw out half the stuff that, you know, maybe my son would have liked to get to know me."

"Yeah, moms," scoffed Henry.

"Well, it's not like your father gave a crap," shrugged Regina.

"You know," Neal glared, "I almost wish you were my half-sister. Then you'd fall under the 'no hitting girls' rule exception."

"Oh, actual emotion from Nealfire! The magic soul cleanse must be working!" chirped Hook.

"Like anything could cleanse your soul," snorted Regina.

"Please, I never mass-murdered people!"

"No, you just stood by drinking rum while my mother did and then hid under the bodies - which someone here found extremely sexy, apparently!" she threw at Emma.

"I had a very troubled childhood that messed up my concept of love!" Emma defended.

"Which is why you believed a bullshit dream that I was at peace and rooting for you to fuck my asshole step dad!?"

"How many times do I have to say 'I'm sorry' for that!" Emma moaned. "I'm sorry that I wanted to believe you were at peace because I wanted to bang your step dad _that I didn't know was your sttep dad_."

"But still didn't care when you did!"

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" David cried as green stuff started dripping out of his nose... then everyone else's noses.

"The cleansing has begun!" declared Not-Chief who had been sitting naked in the back of the hut texting on his i-Phone the whole time. "Make use of the tissue boxes behind you. I apologize that they are not two-ply, but the Night Train is becoming very stingy."

"Okay, we're really going to have to investigate this mysterious supply train someday," huffed Emma as she grabbed tissues. "I mean, seriously, who the hell is bringing us stuff? And from where? And how is it getting paid for?"

"It's really not important," insisted Regina.

"Yes, never mind that," said Not-Cheif. "Focus on blowing the mind-altering evil flower pollen out of your nasal passages. It sometimes helps to block one side and blow really hard, then repeat on the other side."

"How are you not sweating!?" Regina snapped at him.

"A secret magic of my ancestors that makes white people look bad when they come to our sweat lodges on bullshit vision quests."

"I'm only half _white_ , you know."

"Yes, on your _mother's_ side. Magically, it's like being Jewish," said Not-Chief. "And the peoples of the region of Valencia and Hortencia are far more white than not. Don't let the accent and spicy food fool you."

"Where are 'your people' even from in the Enchanted Forest anyway?" asked Emma. "I never met one indigenous person. Or did Regina massacre all of them?"

"Oh, no, just our band that attempted to regain our ancestral lands. We had been sent to the Enchanted Reservation of Dumarlone past the Dragonfields of Zorn many generations ago. It is an inhospitable wasteland where our people were sent when the White Man kingdoms allied together to wipe us out using the Ogres. I believe they were inspired by the Duke of the Frontlands who was extremely anti-Semitic."

"Yeah, he was like Enchanted Forest Hitler," sighed Neal.

"But it has excellent pizzas," amended Not-Chief.

"Seriously!?" asked Henry.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I meant piazzas," Not-Chief corrected. "The stench of your white people sweat must be getting to me. Let me guess, you have been eating Granny's meatloaf."

"Yeaaaaaaaaah," they all sighed regrettably.

Not-Cheif nodded and gestured to David, "You know, you bear a striking resemblance to Enchanted Forest Custer."

"Enchanted Forest Custer?" asked Henry.

"His name was Sir... something-or-other. White man names confused my people, so I don't know. But he hated my people and killed many. He hunted us like dogs.

"The Scalp Spirits tell me that you once had a mullet just like his," Not-Chief told David.

"You had a mullet!?" laughed Emma.

"There are Scalp Spirits? asked Henry.

"How the hell do you know that?" sputtered David.

"Mate, don't question his mystical hair-related powers!" sussed Hook.

Not-Chief explained, "Enchanted Forest Custer's scalp had great restorative powers. The remains were kept in a sacred spot by my people. My grandfather even touched it once and said he had a vision of two men with the same enchanted mullet, one a despicable prince who would be killed by a dimwitted foe and the other a foolish shepherd who would have his heart crushed by his own wife. Both would lose their kingdoms because they were stupid white men who cut off their powerful hair, losing its great ancestral magic."

"See! See!" Hook exclaimed. "Hair is power!"

"If it was such powerful hair, then how the hell did 'Enchanted Forest Custer' lose his scalp and exile you all to some wasteland?" scoffed Regina.

"A deal with the Dark One, of course," sighed Not-Chief. "And because of that, my people have never received recompense for the crimes perpetrated against us."

"Yeah, that and because the Enchanted Forest is full of racists," said Neal.

"Yes, well, obviously. That goes without saying."

"I think I'm going to throw up," moaned Henry as his nose kept gushing.

"Use one of the buckets behind you," said Not-Chief. "And try not to vomit on your amulet."

0"Why does it say 'Made in China' on the back?" asked David.

"Because your ancestor destroyed all of our sacred talisman and then your step-mother-in-law cursed us all to a world where our meager magical possessions that we had managed to retain went to the Dark One who has been either on field trips, held hostage, comatose, or just very grumpy and thus has not returned our things. But I imbued what magic I could in those cheap reproductions."

"How'd you do that?" asked Regina.

"I had a werewolf urinate on them, of course."

"AHHHHHH! UGHHHH! GROSS!" they collectively cried (save Hook) and pulled off their amulets before running out of the sweat lodge.

"Quitters," huffed Hook and he demanded, "You will cure my hair problem, right?"

"That depends," said Not-Chief. "I will have to read your scalp."

At the pirate's unnerved look, he rolled his eyes and expounded, "While still firmly attached to your skull."

"Oh, well, in that case, read away, mate!"

Not-Chief looked mildly disgusted by the offer, but scalp reading money was scalp reading money, so he dug his mop-callused fingers into Hook's sweaty, thinning mop.

"Hmm... the Scalp Spirits tell me that you were raised by your father and had an older brother who took over your guardianship after he left. While your father had fine hair, your brother was not blessed follicles as alluring to women as yours."

"That's true!" Hook nodded. "Liam was kind of fat too! Papa always said he took after Mama in looks. She died when I was a baby, hit by a runaway ox cart. Tragic, really, though our world's not one for children being blessed with two surviving well-adjusted parents. Not that my father was well-adjusted, I suppose."

"Nor your brother," said Not-Chief. "The Scalp Spirits tell me that he was a bully, and young women are foolish and like 'bad boys, and so with his sailor's commission, even if his hair was on the curly side, he got much ass while you, though young and handsome with fine locks, were insecure and a virgin due to your abandonment complex on the high seas which made choosing a life as a sailor rather masochistic and thus not especially healthy where the development of your sexuality was concerned, particularly with the large number of prostitutes."

"Also true," grumbled Hook.

"The Scalp Spirits also say," Not-Chief continued, "that your brother paid your naval shipmates to take you to one of these port brothels to remedy your virginal condition before setting sail as it was considered bad form and unlucky to have a virgin on the crew."

"It's true, it was and they did," sighed Hook and he smiled a little at the memory. "Embarrassed as I was, and much as I sometimes hated Liam, that was a magical night. It was awkward at first, but quite wonderful in the end. That whore was older than me but there's something to be said of experience. I learned quite a few tricks that night which came in handy once I'd embraced a pirate's life. The way she ran those fingers through my hair..."

"Hmm," hummed Not-Chief. "The Scalp Spirits tell me that your brother was not doing you a solid. And that your mother was not killed by an ox cart, but left your alcoholic father, the son whose existence forced her to marry him, and the baby she regretted having. Sadly, single and spoiled women in our world have few choices, and so took up the art the prostitution, the only kind of MILF that was acceptable in the Enchanted Forest."

"Wait... _what_?" Hook sputtered.

Not-Chief removed his fingers and told the pirate somberly, "The Scalp Spirits say they are very sorry to tell you that your brother tricked you into losing your virginity to your own mother."

"WHAT!?"

"That will be fifty-nine ninety-five. I take cash or credit but no checks."

"YOU'RE SAYING I SHAGGED MY OWN MUM!?"

"It is not me, it is the Scalp Spirits," corrected Not-Chief. "Also, you have enough follicular resonance that it may be possible to stimulate new hair growth. Five sessions of a hundred and twenty dollars each usually, but I will give you twenty percent off on account of the trauma of copulating with your own mother having unbalanced your mojo."

Hook made use of one of the barf buckets before running naked out of the hut screaming.

Not-Chief doused the fire and exited the sweat lodge where he found Pocahantas cleaning talisman. She rolled her eyes at him and snorted, "Let me guess, the Scalp Spirits said he fucked his whore mother?"

"White men are incestuous and gullible and often sluts," shrugged Not-Chief.

"Got that right," huffed the princess. "If John Smith shows his manwhore ass in this town..."

Not-Chief snorted and concluded, "You know, I wouldn't be surprised if that dumb pirate got syphilis from his mother _and_ his deadbeat MILF."

"White people are strange," said Pocahontas.

She shook off the thought, then asked, "Are you still giving the used tissues to that ex-fairy?"

"As a huxter capitalizing on the corruption of my own people's traditions to swindle people out of money and leave them psychologically traumatized, who am I to deprive an addict?"

* * *

AN: The title in an homage to that _The X-Files_ episode "The Blessing Way". Hook's line about pirate memories is from _Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy_ , an old SNL digital short. Valencia and Hortencia are kingdoms in _Galavant_.

Next up: A chat in the woods.


	57. Baggage Claim

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note #1 SPOILER ALERT: I watched "Souls of the Departed" and added a few minor spoilers to this chapter. Overall, meh episode (as the ratings reflect, ha!). As annoyed as I was by Emma's bullshit "I'd have come for you" excuse, I was a bit tickled that Emma and Neal met in a broke-ass carnival! Makes my story a *bit* more plausible, right?  
**

 **General Note #2: Another vote has been cast against Regina and Neal being related. It's looking more and more like that fanfiction trope will not be included in this story.**

 **Note to Mir: Actually, you're wrong. The scene involves Henry quoting the infamous line "second star to the right and straight on 'til morning", which unnerves Neal who asks him where he heard that, to which Henry remarks about Peter Pan. Neal never reveals anything about Pan being evil or Neverland dangerous in that scene, because, of course, the scene was intended to air in the episode but cut for time and it would have ruined the big reveal in the season finale that Pan is an evil, child-stealing sonofabitch. Henry uttering the line that became the title of the two parter was foreshadowing but never was Pan's villainy or the dangers of Neverland explicitly stated other than Hook's vague reference to the Lost Boys in "Tallahassee" suggesting that Neverland was perhaps not a place of adventure and imagination, but abandonment and loneliness... (which still makes CS that much more disgusting!)**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-TWO**

 **BAGGAGE CLAIM**

When Neal reached the road, the early spring air having now chilled him rather miserably in his sweat-soaked clothes, he found only Emma still there, rooting through the Bug's trunk, tossing items out onto the pine-needle covered ground.

"Lose something?"

Emma jumped, looking very much like a startled wet raccoon, then returned to her unloading. "Making room. Gotta clear out of Granny's and who needs a highway cleanup crew when you have the Merry Men?"

"You're moving back to the Loft?"

Emma frowned and answered, "Hell no. At this point, I might just join the hobo camp in the forest. It's about the only place in this curse-forsaken town that's not tainted with fucked up memories of a life I wish I could forget," she admitted and leaned against the side of the car.

"Conversation with your mom the other day didn't go well, huh?" Neal deduced, joining her and shoving his hands in his sweaty jeans pockets.

"Don't bring my mom into this," Emma snapped at him then let out a breath. "I'm sorry. I just need a... a 'safe space' as lame as that sounds. I can't even drive my own car without shitty memories. It's like a decade ago all over again, only this time I'm not going to find out that it was all just a misunderstanding. And _work_ , between the nasty stuff I did with Hook there and finding out Graham wanted to bang me because he was fixated on my mom - I spend all my time on duty patrolling just to avoid the Station."

"We've only been back from Camelot a week," Neal pointed out. "And we went there like a week after the time portal-"

"Don't you use chronology on me!" Emma cut him off. "It's been two weeks of _torture_ , Neal and Camelot wasn't exactly a retreat either in case you've forgotten my multiple breakdowns! I keep telling myself to forget that stuff, to focus on the moment, that this is a do-over, but I _can't_. It's all tainted, _because of me_. Because of _my choices_. And I used to _love_ being Sheriff. I mean, not at first, but I really got into it, thought I could be good at it... until I just fucked it all up and became like a cliché corrupt small town sheriff in a horror movie. And every time I put on this badge, I think of what a hypocrite I am, suspending my father. He wasn't wrong about that."

Grimacing, Emma concluded, "Also, I'm sorry about the things I said, Neal. Not making anything of your life. That wasn't nice... or fair."

"It wasn't nice," Neal conceded, "but it was fair. I could have turned myself in, done the time, but I was a coward. And I'm sorry for calling you a bitch and, you know, macing you in the face."

"You spent centuries in a prison. And I did abandon you when I should have been fighting for you," said Emma. "I don't blame you for still being angry that I couldn't find the strength to fight for our love after I blamed you for the same thing. And the whole... saying I would have gone to The Underworld for you, which I only said because I felt guilty that I told your for father in the past to leave you a dead hero but I was going after Hook for the same reason... even though he wasn't actually a hero... and then asking for your help to split my heart to rescue him was, you know, really insensitive," she said, then amended, "Plus the whole thing where that wasn't you and I fell for a stupid reverse psychology trick that you suffered for because I wanted to believe you were happy somewhere so I wouldn't be conflicted about who I would save and give my heart to..."

"Yeah," Neal agreed, "that all kind of sucked, Emma. But I know it's partially my fault you felt that way about me, that you didn't want me around to complicate things. I screwed up both of our lives with those watches, and I was never able to get back on track. Then August..."

Neal sighed and admitted, "That interview was the first real chance I'd gotten, just because some editor saw me sketching on the subway. My life was just a shit list of bad jobs and crappy apartments."

"And then you died," said Emma glumly. "No one should have a life that long and miserable."

"Which was why I almost welcomed it," he shrugged. "From the moment you came back into my life and I found out about Henry, I was just waiting for it to all go to crap like everything in my life always did. I was waiting to lose like I always do."

He smiled bitterly. "Which was once something we had in common. I just hoped that if I had to lose that would mean you'd get to win for a change."

"I thought I finally had," muttered Emma, "but it was the syphilis and pixie dust talking."

Shaking her head, looking around at the trees, Emma lamented, "I can't stand it here, Neal. Maybe it makes me a coward, but I can't stand the reminders every day of how I failed. And my parents... I can't be around them without feeling like such a fool. I can't be around _you_ without feeling like a failure. I mean, _look at me_ ," she sighed, gesturing to her wet ruined clothes stained with pixie dust nose bleed goo. "I was basically some... pixie dust sex addict and I didn't even notice anything was wrong with my own son.

"Henry suffered pediment brain damage in that other timeline because I was a shitty mother who never took the time to question my own complete one eighty in personality - and there's nothing I can do in _this one_ to get him back the years he's lost because of Neverland. He's already grown up too fast without the actual time to process growing up, which is something I had to do, minus the magical early puberty onset, and I never wanted that for him. I wanted him to have an actual childhood, the last years left after I broke the Curse, but instead he went from an eleven year old boy to practically shaving... and how did I not even notice that!?"

"Pixie dust and syphilis?" Neal smartly responded.

Emma huffed. "Yeah, okay."

"And, you know, the soul separation thing."

"Yeah, that too, I guess, but it still makes me feel like an idiot, a failure," Emma complained, "and it's stuff I can't fix. Because I failed to protect Henry he lost his innocence when giving him up was supposed to protect that for as long as possible. And now he _hates_ me," she sniffed.

"I'm sure he doesn't really," Neal tried to comfort.

"Like he really doesn't think you're a loser?" Emma retorted, the winced, "Sorry."

"S'okay."

Emma huffed. "Henry's finally realized that I'm not the hero he thought I was when I ran for Sheriff, which was the only reason I did that - because I needed an excuse to be in his life, to measure up to his stories when I knew that I didn't. Somehow my parents and Hook convinced me that I did, though, and I lived this messed up lie that just hurt everyone instead of actually admitting that I was a nobody and _trying_ to be somebody worthy of all the hype."

"It's easier to give in to false praise than admit you don't know what the hell you're doing," Neal mused, "but that doesn't make you a failure, Emma, and you sure were never a nobody either. What happened to Henry, that wasn't your fault. It was Regina's for her doomsday plot, Greg and Tamara for stealing it, Hook for helping them, your parents for hiding that magic beanfield and trying to executive decision everyone's fate. Mine for trusting Tamara because I didn't think you would ever trust me. Even Henry takes some blame for always wandering off when he's told not to because of the aggravating anti-authority issues that being raised by Regina gave him.

" _But it wasn't yours_. You were in the dark. Everyone was keeping you there. And you did your best to try and protect him and then to get him back - and I did too - while the rest of our family was walking around with their thumbs up their butts for days."

Emma snorted at that. "I'm pretty sure I was in the thumb-butt category. You found him in a couple of hours-"

"And lost him in less than that," Neal pointed out.

"Because of the pixie dust parent-hating magic," Emma reminded.

"True," Neal conceded.

"We were always better as a team. Kind of terrible by ourselves, though," sighed Emma. "Always managing to fuck up the plan."

"Yeah, I spent years wondering how different it would have been if you'd come with me to fence the watches," Neal admitted. "Would August have stayed away? Would he have come clean? Guess it doesn't matter now."

"No, I guess not."

"Look, Em, you made a lot of mistakes, but you're here now, learning from them, trying to fix things. You stopped the time portal, you destroyed the Dark One-"

"Only because I got a do-over," Emma pointed out. "I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, Neal, but the facts are pretty clear on this. I failed at _everything_ which is the only reason I needed one. And if I was actually capable of fixing things on my own, you wouldn't be here, would you? You're here because no one 'up there'," she pointed to the sky, "believes that I can really do this."

"No one should have to save a universe alone, Emma," Neal argued. "And maybe you were never meant to do it alone and that's where it all went wrong. We _were_ always better as a team. And now we can fix what we _can_ fix. Maybe it won't be everything. We can't give Henry back his innocence or those years left of childhood. And that sucks. I know it does. I remember what it was like being fourteen and then arriving here and having to deal with a strange new world _and_ growing up freakishly fast. I went from being stuck at fourteen for centuries to whacking off and sneaking into strip clubs in like a matter of months... and I wouldn't be surprised if having that pixie dust stuck in my brain from way back then gave me ADHD and prematurely gray hair."

"I like the gray," said Emma. "It's distinguished."

"Naw, it's just slightly less unappealing than going bald," Neal countered, self-consciously running a hand through his hair and feeling just _slightly_ sympathetic toward Hook for a split second, and then that passed.

"Pixie dust or not," insisted Emma, "it doesn't change that I screwed up everyone's stories and I have no idea how to fix them now. I can't even fix _mine_. I mean, I butchered everything that was wonderful and unique about my parents' love to try and copy it instead of trying to save the wonderful and unique love that _we_ had. I can't look at them without seeing that, even though I didn't ruin them this time. I can't look at _you_ without seeing all the 'could have beens' that I wasted, that I know now were the path I should have taken, a life and a love that would have made me a better person, helped fix the damage my parents and my childhood and prison did."

Emma let out a breath and asked, "You were the love of my life and I lost you, and even though you're here, I'm still losing you and I don't think I'm ever going to get you back, am I?"

Neal didn't answer right away, and ran a hand through his damp hair before telling her, "I'll always have your back, Emma. I'll always be your friend. You're still the love of my life and you always will be. Demigod fake-out or not, that was true. But I think maybe we had our moment, or two, when we could have chosen to take the same path - together. But we each chickened out and now... now that serendipity, that soulmate moment, is passed. We're not... in harmony anymore."

"What about third time's the charm?"

"We both know that's not a thing," Neal sighed, as frustrated and disappointed as she was.

"But we were happy," Emma stated. "When you asked, that day in the forest before... we _were_ happy once."

"We were. We were the happiest I'd ever been in my entire life," Neal admitted, "but then stuff happened, Emma. A lot of bad stuff, and you weren't wrong in Neverland that dredging up all that pain, trying to actually get passed it, let go of it, and find out way back to each other... I want us to be good. But the amount of anger, bitterness, and self-loathing we're both carrying around is a shitty foundation for a relationship. Maybe not as epically nonsensical as the bullshit you pulled out of a storybook to justify having the hots for a clinically narcissistic killer with a history of rape and alcoholism-"

"I get your point," grumbled Emma.

"The whole 'you had lots and lots of sex with the guy who ruined my life' on top of the 'after saving him but not me' thing doesn't really help with the healing here," Neal sighed, "any more than my saying 'but Pinocchio said he'd look after you' makes any fucking sense for leaving you without even a good-bye. There's a lot of selfish stupidity and fear in our pasts, and when your trust in someone is shaken, even with pixie dust as an excuse-"

"It's hard to get it back as strong as it was," Emma conceded. "I still don't get it, you know? Why you felt that was the right choice."

"And I wish I could explain why I did," sighed Neal. "But I don't imagine you can really explain your actions in any way that'll make sense either. I know you have reasons, justifications, and messed up childhood trauma or whatever, but it still boils down to feeling like you didn't really care about me, like you were happy to be rid of me for good, and eager to plaster over all of our memories with pirate spackle. And I know it's gotta be the same for you, like how could I leave like that and say I did it because I loved you? People do fucked up shit."

"And knowledge doesn't heal a broken heart, doesn't it?" said Emma glumly. "Sometimes the truth just makes it worse. Because it would be easier if you had never really loved me, if you had really turned me in."

"And it would be easier if you had really wanted me dead, one less inconvenience in your life. That our mistakes were just a messed up misunderstanding perpetuated by fear and self-loathing means we really did have a chance and we're the ones that ultimately screwed up. We're the reason that we never got Tallahassee. We're the reason that it's too late to have it now."

"It's not fair," Emma lamented. "Why can't we have a third chance? Why can't we be brave now? I know I'm still angry about stuff too, but I did forgive you. I want to believe that there's still hope you can do the same, that love can be stronger than that anger and in time we'll laugh about the crazy stuff that happened in another life that's just a hazy dream."

"I want to believe that too," Neal told her. "I tried to do the right thing. I'm tired of being lonely, of not belonging and trying to work out all the wrong choices I made and being haunted by what could have been. I want to believe we belong together, but fate or destiny, it's always pulling us apart."

"Did you just put a seriously depressing ending on a Lumineers' song?" Emma huffed. "And who says you can't change destiny if your will is strong enough? Can't we try?"

Neal regarded her for a moment before suggesting, "How about for now we head back to Granny's, shower off this sweat and pixie dust snot, and then get some coffee and grilled cheese? Then we can scout the town for available real estate not tainted with corrupt policing, incestuous romance, or shitty parenting memories. And we can wrap the evening by blowing up the Sheriff's Station and blaming it on Tinkerbell."

"I appreciate the attempt at deflecting," smiled Emma ruefully.

"I appreciate that you think our love could outwit fate," Neal responded. "I just happen to have been knocked down by fate enough times for trying to fight it."

"And you think my fate is... what?"

"Well, from a literary perspective, you were the devolution of a once strong, complex hero into an abuse tolerating, child abandoning asshole..."

"Gee _thanks_."

"I'm just say'n, that's how you were written, Emma," Neal told her. "That was coded into your fairy tale DNA... or maybe infected by the meddling of Satan's minions just to ensure you failed at your true task. Either way, it happened to you and to your parents before you. Just like I had the coward thing going. And maybe your destiny was originally to overcome that and help everyone else break out of their clichés, but somewhere along the way someone fucked it up, whether it was Merlin or your parents' spell or Pinocchio - or me. One final choice on top of the rest that made that hero Emma less set in stone so when you made that choice at the time portal your destiny did a one-eighty to the asshole side. And can you really fight that? Can going back and not making that choice really prevent what all those other mistakes already set in motion so that we can put all our failures behind us, undo all the damage and the broken, not-so-heroic people that made us and just live happily ever after without any price?"

Emma hated when Neal got philosophical.

"I don't know," she sighed. "Maybe not. Maybe the price for fixing the universe is that we don't get to fix ourselves and live happily ever after, that Tallahassee is gone forever. It was a good dream, though, wasn't it?"

Neal smiled at that. "It was. Aside from being a swamp. It was a good concept, anyway. We were going to make our own destiny, our own happily ever after."

"I wish we could have done that," sniffed Emma. "I wish I could have gone back and never walked into that train station and gone to Canada with you and we'd have raised Henry and maybe I wouldn't have turned out such a maladjusted crap Savior, bad mom, and all around screw up of a person who didn't realize what I gave up until it was too late to get it back."

"Yeah, but here's the thing," said Neal, "contrary to the fairy tale worldview, relationships aren't just mortal peril, passion, and assholes pretending they are heroes by making out whenever morally ambiguous stuff pops up. I get that you were a loner, Emma, and I was too, and growing up all you had was the backseats of cars with boys and then motel rooms with whatever guy bought you a drink that night you were feeling lonely. But there's friends and there's family and just having coffee and grilled cheese."

"I guess so," muttered Emma, remembering Merlin's advice.

Shrugging, Neal amended, "I was never one for the grand and passionate - or instant at first sight get married and head off into the sunset. Which I know doesn't jive with the fairy tale thing. And I know you got accustomed to that way of doing things, how relationships, basic interactions work with people who grew up there: have an epic adventure, fight about how screwed up you are, defeat the bad guy, pretend all that screwed up stuff doesn't matter and declare undying adrenaline-fueled love. But that's just not my thing, Emma. And it's not real life, the life you're trying to give these people. The life you're trying to get for yourself to break that fourth wall.

"I love you, but I'm not going to just set aside all that's wrong with us - or just channel it into weird love-hate sex - so we can skip all the hard parts and have a post-villain-besting roll in the hay and call it 'Tallahassee'. We _both_ deserve better than that kind of fake-ass cop-out of a happy ending. And I'd rather just have a good friend than that, to be honest."

"Is this the part where you tell me again that I need therapy?" sighed Emma.

"It's the part where we get in the car because it's fucking freezing out," replied Neal, which drew a snort from Emma.

"We've got a lot more baggage, Emma," he told her, laying a hand on her arm, "and now a lot of it we piled on each other. Sorting through that - it probably will require therapy. And that doesn't necessarily mean a happy ending. But we can still get lunch and talk about when we were happy together and find something good in those memories, even if we can't recreate them."

"You really suck at romance," grumbled Emma. "No wonder I went with bad one liners and plagiarized poetry. Your philosophical cynicism is a real mood-killer, Cassidy."

"Stealing a keychain wasn't romantic enough for you?" Neal asked and observed, "Don't tell me you tossed it in the sewer again."

Emma glowered while closing the trunk. "No. I lost it somewhere in the Shattered Sight mess, probably when Regina was trying to head-slam me into a desk. I haven't gotten back to the station to look for it... or my left earring... or my gun... which I should probably be more concerned about than I have the energy to be."

"Well, at least Regina was nice enough to heal your ear after ripping your earring out," Neal recalled.

"Only because she was annoyed that I was bleeding all over her dress. Now who's trying to revisionist history villains into heroes?"

"Touché."

After starting the engine, Emma asked, "I don't suppose you'd consider a friends with benefits situation? Share a shower?"

"Syphilis, remember?" smirked Neal, picking up the prescription bag he'd gotten from the pharmacy that morning.

Emma winced as she pulled onto the highway, heading back toward the nightmare that was her rebooted life. "Right, sorry."

"Well, it was your great grandfather and my mom's fault, I guess," Neal shrugged. "And not yours that angel couldn't pull enough strings to cleanse your brain and cure my magically-preserved corpse before translocating my fine self in front of your speeding-"

A very naked Hook suddenly came running out of the woods onto the highway and Emma slammed on the brakes - but not fast enough to keep from hitting the pirate who went tumbling into a ditch.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" Emma gasped as they bailed out the car and ran to see the carnage.

Thankfully - or not - Hook wasn't a mangled lump of roadkill. Emma hadn't actually been going that fast and other than some roadburn he seemed more-or-less okay, aside from the moaning, blubbering, and crying.

"Hook?" Emma tentatively asked, "are you... okay?"

Eyes wild, Hook reached out and grabbed fistfuls of Neal's hoodie and wailed, "I SHAGGED MY OWN WHORE MUM!"

"I can see that," uttered Emma.

"Gotta admit I had an inkling," agreed Neal.

As Hook supplemented his inconsolable weeping with vomiting in the ditch, Emma considered, "I should probably call for an ambulance. We're still on for grilled cheese after, though, right?"

* * *

AN: If Whale took Emma's necklace from Tink then why didn't he return it? What are those two weirdoes up to?

Next up: Snow gets out of the hospital!


	58. Party at Your Own Risk

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-THREE**

 **PARTY AT YOUR OWN RISK**

Saturday brought a party at Granny's. After Snow's release from the hospital, they sent Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, Ingrid, one of those magic-resisting cuffs, and one Belle's books about using memory stones to treat mental illness back to Arendelle with The Apprentice's dick wand.

Then they all gathered at the diner to finally celebrate the town not being destroyed - and the new mayor not dying. Well, not 'all'. Hook had a mental breakdown and was now in Ingrid's padded cell. And, technically, "Mary Margaret" wasn't mayor any longer as she'd stepped down, thus reinstating Regina as Mayor, though Belle had spent the better part of the evening arguing that they needed a free and fair election.

Avoiding that conversation, Emma and Neal were hunched over a map at the back booth.

"... figure we get Ursula and Cruella first if my sources are right," Emma was saying, pointing to red circles on the map where a former bountyhunter colleague who'd owned her favor had staked out Ursula's apartment and place of work.

It wasn't exactly true what Emma had told Poseidon that only Rumplestiltskin knew where she was. Neal had his dead guy intell, what with watching and fuming over how Robin Hood kicked his father out of his apartment.

And Ursula would know how to get to Cruella's upstate foreclosed-upon mansion.

Then, on the way back to Maine, she and Neal would swing through Vermont - Emma had called Lily's apartment manager in Boston and she was no longer there - and pick up her frenemy.

Emma was just glad they'd gotten one last awkward 'us is probably never gonna happen' chat out of the way before the eight hour drive to New York City that was sure to be uncomfortable anyway.

Not just because they were taking Tamara's (much more comfortable and with GPS and new plates and VIN put on by Michael Tillman) SUV, which was maybe slightly weird, using the dead skank's car. But it was less weird than an eight hour roadtrip in the Bug with battling memories of love and betrayal between them.

Although not as awkward as it would be if they had a teenager in the backseat...

"You're not coming," Emma said without looking up as Henry's shadow fell over the map.

"But Moooooooooooom," Henry wined. "You owe me! You called me a terrible son!"

"You called me a terrible mother, sheriff, and savior first. I win," Emma retorted. "You are not sitting in the back with a homicidal mer-princess, a woman who wants to murder my entire family, _or_ riding shotgun with a sharpie-eyebrowed serial killer who tried to murder you in another life."

"But maybe they're not so bad now," Henry argued. "Maybe unchanging history changed them... or unchanged them back to what they're supposed to be, which isn't so psychotic."

"Have you learned nothing about this family, Henry?" interjected Regina. "All new relatives and acquaintness of relatives are psychotic. It's probably due to the apparently disturbingly high amount of inbreeding in the Enchanted Forest that makes those polygamist sibling-marrying compound people look sane."

"Speaking of," interjected Robin, who'd finally emerged from his breakup manpain cave in the woods, "we really need to do something about the polygamist sibling-marrying compound over by the wildlife refuge. They keep sending out 'recruiters' to try and brainwash girls into marrying their creepy old men. I've hardly been able to come into town, everyone is so worried about them raiding the forest camps."

"Freaks," grumbled Regina. "I should have mass-murdered them back in the Enchanted Forest. It was on my to-do list before Maleficent got all up in my business about the Dark Curse."

"Well, you can't mass murder them now," Snow argued, smoothing down the blue dress she was excited to have fit back into after a diet of crappy hospital food.

If only David wasn't still on penicillin for the syphilis she'd given him, the evening might have ended in a far more fun fashion that it probably would.

"Who says I can't?" Regina shot back. "Next time there's a crazy magical catastrophe - in a week or two - I'll just casually direct it in their direction and problem solved!"

"Great, you do that," Emma said, folding up the map. "We're gonna head out."

"Well, take some food to go!" Granny insisted. "And lots of coffee. I don't want you hitting any wolves - or pirates."

Everyone sniggered a bit, though it was kind of sad and if Emma didn't have to get to New York to find Ursula so Poseidon didn't kill them all, she would have investigated that shaman.

Emma hugged Henry after Neal, telling him, "No burning down the school. Belle can help you if you need more challenging work. And don't forget to help with dusting your grandfather's shop until he wakes up. And remember-"

"No kissing any girls until I know who I'm related to," Henry groaned, rolling his eyes.

"We'll be back in a week," Neal concluded. "Try to keep the town from self-destructing."

They all headed outside to wave off Neal and Emma pulling Tamara's repainted U-Haul, then checked the time.

"I need to get to the office and get a few things settled," sighed Regina and her gaze followed Robin and Roland, "and then find out what's really going on between those camps. I don't know what he blew all that money on that was supposed to be for a room at the Inn, but I'm sure there's more going on than some daughter-snatching cultists. He's been very evasive since that ice bitch's spell."

"Well, maybe some hurtful truths were said between Robin and his men that he's trying to work through," Snow pointed out. "I can't imagine they were all supportive of him dating his late wife's murderer. Also, I'm sorry I encouraged that, including after the whole finding out you murdered Marian because of me thing. That was being neither a good hero nor a good friend."

"Well, between the baby brain and the brain damage, I suppose I'll let it slide - this time," said Regina, and Snow looked relieved in that annoying way she couldn't stand.

"We should head home," David came over, taking Snow by the arm. "Dr. Whale said not to overdo it."

"Like you weren't over doing it going to that Shaman just days after getting out of the hospital?"

"Hey, I'm pixie dust free now, and my heart's fine."

"Well, something about you is _fine_ ," giggled Snow, swatting his butt.

Regina rolled her eyes in disgust as the pair continued to flirt on their way across the street. She so hated sappy romance.

How had she let herself get sucked in by that black hole of nauseating happiness?

Shaking her head, she turned in the direction of City Hall for what would probably another late night, just like old times.

* * *

The ringing of her desk phone startled Regina awake and she groaned to discover she'd fallen asleep at her desk on a pile of paperwork that Mary Margaret had never done, most of which was complaints filed by citizens about her terrible leadership.

"No way they won't elect me," she huffed and grabbed the phone with a grumpy, "What?"

The 'what' was David, who'd been demoted to deputy but was now acting Sheriff again, calling her to the forest, specifically the polygamist sibling-marrying compound over by the wildlife refuge.

"Oh God," Regina exclaimed, covering her nose and mouth when she got out of the car.

There were bodies everywhere. People in fairy tale clothes were laying in heaps, all of them with horrible slashing wounds and what looked like their chests cut open and hearts ripped out.

"I was on my way to Anton's to get some produce and I smelled the blood," explained Ruby, who seemed far less put off by the site than a waitress should.

"There's no way one person did this," David stated the obvious. "It had to be another one of the Second Curse factions. I know these people didn't exactly make friends with them when they all arrived here."

"Trying to steal little girls so old men can impregnate them tends to make enemies quickly," said Regina.

"Zelena's farm is the closest," said Ruby. "I heard some of these compound people had moved in there and the adjacent forest-dwellers weren't happy about it. Arguments over using the well."

"Then I'll start there."

"Maybe we should call Emma," Ruby suggested.

"We're not calling Emma," David insisted. "I can handle this. I can prove that I'm good at this job. And if this is a dispute between groups that don't acknowledge the laws of this world, then it may require my authority in the Enchanted Forest to find the culprits and hold them accountable."

"What authority? You're an impostor who gained a kingdom through a coupe. At the most you're a peasant consort to a queen who's legitimacy is questionable, particularly since she required a brain transplant," scoffed Regina.

"Kinda true," said Ruby. "And, honestly, whoever did this did the town a service. I mean, _look at them_. They're hideously deformed without the glamour spells they used. You should see the matriarch they kept under the bed in the house. Here I thought that was just a creepy rumor. I'm all for finding these killers and throwing them a parade."

"We're supposed to be the heroes here!" David complained.

"But you aren't," Regina reminded. "I'll talk to Robin. You... clean up this mess. I'm sure Dr. Whale will be thrilled with all the 'specimens'."

"Whatever you say, _Madam Mayor_ ," sighed David.

 _What a day_ , Regina thought as she headed back to her car - and stepped in entrails.

"Oh, farts," she snapped, then looked around to make sure no one had heard her.

* * *

AN: Storybrooke has a mass murder mystery on their hands! Is it the new residents of Zelena's farm? Are the Merry Men above cult slaughter? (Points if you know the TV show and episode referenced in this chapter!)

Next up: Ursula has quite a story to tell.


	59. Roadtripping

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Chapter 43 Answer: _The X-Files_ "Home"**

 **Note to Mir: Remember, not everyone's story/life is the same in this universe, because Emma never changed time, thus no Buttery Effect. Isaac did indeed meddle with Cruella's story/life, but the circumstances are different. (I was annoyed with Cruella being a straight up psychopath created just so Emma could kill her in self-defense and everyone on the show call it "murder" for some reason. Plus, the stink breath power was STUPID.) I imagine an election in Storybrooke WOULD get messy, a sort of current American presidential politics in microcosm. I imagine King George/Albert Spencer would be the Donald Trump candidate. Glad you're interested in the murder mystery involving Zelena's farm and these mysterious factions of Second Curse people, as well as Ursula's story... which will also answer a question from several reviews.  
**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR**

 **ROADTRIPPING**

The final two hours to Manhattan were excruciatingly unpleasant. After _Only You_ came on the radio, Emma couldn't switch it off fast enough to prevent the mood of 'I Spy' being soured... not that it had been easy to play 'I Spy' on a dark freeway.

Rather than stay at Neal's place for the night - it was vacant - or attempt staying at Emma's place - she had sublet it to another bountyhunter - they headed for Ursula's place.

The former mer-princess was a night janitor and would be coming home from the pet shop where she cleaned up bird seed, puppy poop, and scummy fish tanks.

Emma kept lookout while Neal picked the lock... or tried to before realizing it was broken and the door opened by just jiggling the knob and shoving the door in.

There wasn't exactly anything worth stealing in the place, to be honest.

"And I thought you had nothing going on," muttered Emma.

"Yeah, that doesn't not still hurt," Neal retorted.

"It was a bad humor defense mechanism! You do that all-"

The sound of footsteps in the hall silenced them just before the door jiggled and opened. Ursula, looking exhausted and smelling strongly of pet store stink didn't even bat an eye at the two strangers in her apartment.

"Go ahead, take the fish food, what do I care?" she announced. "If you're looking for something worth pawning to steal, try the Super, the jackass who hasn't fixed the communal bathroom in a month so I have to walk across the street to the Seven-Eleven every time I have to take a shit."

"We're not thieves," said Emma.

"Well, we _were_ once," amended Neal. "But we're here to help you get your voice back."

"My voice isn't lost, honey, and I can scream pretty loud if you try anything," Ursula warned.

"He means your magical singing voice. Hook is in this world and he's willing to part with it."

That gave Ursula pause. "Rumplestiltskin cast the Dark Curse, didn't he? When I heard reports about a strange weather phenomena in coastal Maine a few months after arriving in this world and a child who insisted his father had been killed by an evil witch in a town that no one could find... Cruella and I tired to find it, but we never could."

"The Curse was broken a little over a year ago, but Storybrooke is cloaked thanks to, for better or worse, Rumplestiltskin bringing back from the Enchanted Forest... and then, actually, several recastings of the Curse by various villains, one of which resulted in the town vanishing off the face of this earth for about a year, which is what took us so long to find you. Long story short, you can only find Storybrooke if you're invited in, so we had to fetch you instead of just giving you a call," Emma explained.

"And you're going to invite me? A villain?" asked Ursula.

"We know you were screwed over by Hook and your old man," Neal answered. "And that you were just trying to protect Maleficent's daughter. Emma's parents were in the wrong that night-"

"And I've paid for their selfishness my entire life," Emma amended. "They ripped out a part of me and it made me fall in with the wrong crowd, trust the wrong people, hurt my family with selfish actions again and again to try and fill the void they created in my magic. I had my potential for darkness stripped away, so instead of being good I just latched onto bad people who dragged me down with them."

Emma shook her head and sighed. "I ended up as bad off as Lily who didn't have the hope in her heart to try to be good, I was just an asshole by proxy. Which is why we have to find her. We have to fix what my parents screwed up and reunite Maleficent with her daughter."

"And you don't think she'll burn your town to the ground?"

Shrugging, Emma answered, "You could say I have something like foresight - and your friend might actually be the most well-adjusted parent and forgiving person in Storybrooke... which might not be saying a lot considering pretty much every parent is a jerk and we just got past a curse that made everyone vent their grudges through trying to murder one another... but it's a start."

* * *

"So, what's your deal?" asked Ursula, sitting at the bar with Neal as they waited for Emma.

It was early afternoon. Neal had loaded up the furniture he wanted to keep and was taking a break from the boxes while Emma took the trailer to her place where movers were supposed to be helping out, because she'd thought of that while he'd just assumed she would be helping him pack - which was dumb, because being together in his apartment was a bad idea - so it had been just him and the fish princess.

"What do you mean 'what's my deal'?"

"You and Princess Self-Loathing. You were a thing, huh? More than just stealing."

Neal grimaced. "We were... partners in crime and lovers when we were kids. Then Emma got arrested because of this puppet guy from our world who'd escaped the Curse and got conned by Peter Pan's minions into thinking we had to be broken up for our own good, but it was only because Pan knew Emma was pregnant and he wanted our son's heart to become an immortal demigod."

"Yeah, I heard about Pan having some crazy-ass prophesy to do that," Ursula nodded. "So... did that happen?"

"Temporarily. My father killed him in a murder suicide, but it was after Henry gave Pan his heart for awhile and Pan had recast the Dark Curse, so everything got messed up. And then I made the mistake of trying to resurrect my father on the advice of a candle stick and ended up merged with my father until Emma's mother cast the curse _again_ and in this world we couldn't stay that way, so one of us had to die. I made the choice, because my father knew how to stop another villain who was trying to rewrite history and wipe Emma and her family, including my son, from existence."

"But you're here now."

"Unexpected divine intervention. Technically, Emma died too, but since she's the Savior she got a reset button to fix everything that went wrong when Zelena _did_ cast the time travel spell and rewrote history... or rather Emma accidentally rewrote how her parents met which caused a cascade failure of altered events that caused the universe to implode."

"Hate it when that happens," joked Ursula. "So... all of this happened already, I just don't remember it?"

"Well, it wasn't Emma and I who came to find you, but yeah."

"And I got my voice back?"

"You did."

Ursula took a swing of her beer, then prompted, "So, again you and Emma, what's the deal? You got a second or third chance here it seems, but you're giving her the cold emotional shoulder and she looks guilty as sin."

"In that other timeline she mourned me for like five minutes and then went to Hell to resurrect Hook and married him."

"That'd do it," Ursula choked on her beer. "Jeez, how are you not strangling that bitch? Do you want me to strangle her? Like as soon as we get to town and I've got my tentacles back, I can do you a solid and strangle the life out of that pirate-whoring princess."

"Tempting as that is to the dark spot in my heart," said Neal, "I love her too much to want her dead."

"Or not enough," Ursula countered. "It's usually not enough. If you loved her full-stop then you'd hate her just as much. Believe me, I've met enough villains to know how it works."

Neal picked at the label on the empty bottle by his glass. "Yeah, okay, maybe. Thing is? I'm afraid to really love Emma, to be that vulnerable again, not just because I don't feel like I can really trust her not to hurt me, but because I'm pretty sure my sidekick role in her story will end when she succeeds in fixing all the magical damage to the people of Storybrooke that's keeping them from breaking free of their stories."

"You think the Grim Reaper will come calling again?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I've never gotten a happy ending, never gotten the girl or the family or even the good job and nice apartment," Neal explained.

"I hear you," nodded Ursula.

"My story wasn't written to be a happy one, and I died before things were reset, so my being here is an anomaly, a paradox, just like I've always sort of been," Neal continued. "So, I've got no reason to expect I could have even a piece of that happy ending, you know?"

He sighed and shrugged, not sure what else to say. What could he say? That he was actually okay with that? That he'd put in enough time in Purgatory that he'd probably have a spot reserved in Heaven if he didn't screw things up too badly - but it still hurt that he'd probably never get the chance to be a real hero, to be someone that his son was proud of and wanted to know instead of just an ex-deadbeat thief bum in thrift store clothes who's only honest job was sketching tourists in Central Park.

"I guess I'm just a loser," Neal sighed again.

"So, your kid has a loser and a failure for parents," snorted Ursula. "Who doesn't?"

"Some people I would imagine."

"Yeah, well, not where we come from. Everyone thinks my father is this great and terrible but _great_ king. He's a hack who gets all his powers from my namesake, which is why he named me after that crazy sea goddess bitch in the first place. And my mother? She never should have married that jerk. She was young and foolish and he was a handsome prince. She thought they would do great things together, reclaim our people's power over the sea from man through diplomacy, and instead she got harpooned by a pirate, and I got stuck being raised by a tyrant who exiled me to living amongst humans."

"Because you had your singing voice taken."

Ursula snorted. "Is that his story? No surprise there. It was just his excuse. I'm like seventy percent sure he set the whole thing up to get rid of me. My father didn't like me interacting with humans to entertain them rather than luring them to their deaths. Plus, he found out I had the hots for Ariel and even being a little bit bi is a crime punishable with exile in Atlantis. I mean, that was never going to happen. She was straighter than an arrow and yeah, she was hot, but she was dumber than a bag of barnacles with a serious kleptomania problem. But all you have to do is look at the wrong eye candy too long and if you can't be rehabilitated by drowning pirates, it's off to dry land for you!"

Ursula threw back a shot. "My father is such an asshole."

Neal nodded. "Yeah, I hear you. Mine promised to make the most of the second chance at happiness with his true love that I gave him by sacrificing my life. I wasn't even cold in my grave before he started lying to his wife and scheming to get even more dark power. He even let this idiot squatting in my apartment throw out all my stuff because the man I grew into after I landed in another world meant nothing to him. He didn't want to know that guy. _Me_. All he cared about was preserving his memories of me as a kid before I grew up to remind him of how he failed and I screwed up and wasn't everything he hoped I'd be."

"Exactly," nodded Ursula. "Father's are _the worst_. Why should I even go back?"

"Well, you are living in a shittier apartment than mine and I know from experience how crappy the janitorial services are," Neal told her. "He did seem genuinely happy at the idea of a reunion."

"Only when that dirty pirate brought up his shell. Did he ever go looking for it while I was destitute in the Enchanted Forest and had to make a living having tentacle sex with creepy men? Or rotting here in a world I knew nothing about, had no identity papers, no way to make a real life for myself?"

"Yeah, fair point. Father's are _the worst_."

Grimacing, Neal amended, "And I suck as one too, so... yeah."

"You can't say that. It sounds like you barely got the chance to know your kid thanks to that evil puppet man and fate being hell-bent on killing you. Then you lose a year, he's now a bratty teenager. I remember being a bratty teenager. I didn't want jackshit to do with my father - and not just because he was an asshole. I mean, he was a king who gave me anything I wanted, but the way I saw it, he was a hack who never had to work at anything, who just postured around using his tentacles so scare people into getting what he wanted, not by being a _real_ ruler who worked _hard_ for our people's best interests. If he'd even tried talking to human leaders, maybe my mother wouldn't have gone out that day and gotten killed. But he'd never admit it was his fault or change his ways. _That_ is a father who sucks.

"You sound like you really want to try to be a good guy and make up to your kid all the stuff you couldn't help that happened," Ursula concluded.

"I wish Henry saw it that way," sighed Neal. "He just hates me and Emma. To be honest, the real reason we wouldn't let him come along is that being stuck in a car for eight hours together was less awkward than being stuck with him too after all of the things he said under the Shattered Sight spell."

"That bad, huh?"

"It was really bad. I loved my father. I thought he was a good man and I was proud of him even when everyone else thought he was the town coward for leaving the battlefront of a war that was using our people as sacrifices. I was proud because I knew him, I remembered how he cared for me, how he was always there even my mother was off drinking and skanking it up. But I was never there for Henry, so he has no reason to love me or be proud of me," lamented Neal, "and that hurts the most, you know? All I ever wanted was to _not_ be my father, but now what I wouldn't give to have my son look at me the way I did my papa. But it's too late for that now. I missed my chance. Maybe I had it when we met here over a year ago, when he was still a boy, but between the pixie dust puberty onset and him not even remembering me when I died... I'm more a sperm donor to him than anything."

"I always thought I wanted kids," Ursula mused, "until Cruella and I were stuck here with Lily and had no way to care for her. Cruella was cool with marrying old geezers to get their money, but I wanted to make an honest living. I'd try to look in on Lily until I just lost track of her. They said she ran away from her home in Boston and I didn't have the means to pack up and look for her and Cruella didn't want to bother. What kind of parents would we have been anyway?"

"Well, she is a patricidal serial killer," said Neal.

"That's not her fault, though," Ursula sighed. "We ran into that Author once, in the Enchanted Forest. He exiled her there. When they met in her world, she refused his advances even after he wrote her magical powers to protect herself from her abusive mother. So he wrote her multiple personality disorder. Like a Dr. Jeklye and Mr. Hyde situation. And it was the Mr. Hyde who murdered her mother. With the police after her, she begged Isaac to fix her, and he agreed if she'd marry him. But she tried to escape and he sent her here where magic made it harder to fight her dark personality.

"Maleficent found her," explained Ursula, "and recruited her to kill bad people, so she could satisfy her urge without hurting innocent people. But then we ran into Isaac and he when he learned about the loophole, he changed her story again, made her homicidally impotent but no less cured of the intense desire to kill. It was torture for her. She didn't want to kill, but she felt like she had to kill, but she couldn't kill, not even _bad people_ who deserved it _in self defense_. She couldn't protect herself even with her magic. She couldn't stop Snow White and Prince Charming from taking Lily. It really took a toll on her, especially when we got her and she had to start over again in a strange new world. She ended up with some old geezer Big Pharm CFO and got antipsychotics and antidepressants for free. So, I can't really blame her. She'd have been locked up by the State of New York and forgotten otherwise."

Ursula spun a coaster on the bartop and mused, "Sometimes I think we're just made to lose every time. That even when we cut a break, it's a shitty break, a last resort that kills a little bit more of our soul each time. Maybe we're cursed by fate. It's our destiny to be fucked over no matter how hard we try. That's how our stories ago, that's the role we're meant to play on the stage of life that is the farce of our magical existence."

"That mean you don't want to help us find Lily and go to Storybrooke and back to the Enchanted Forest?" asked Neal.

Ursula shrugged. "Oh, I do, if anything just to get my father to take human form so I can knee him in the balls as hard as I possibly can - and with any luck expose him for the fraud he is, break his cult-worship crap, stop humans from hunting mer-people on the false assumption that we are evil human-eaters. Though just hitting dear old dad in the nads would be enough if your ex fails again to give us all a shot at breaking free of this shitty typecasting."

"Emma has a taser you could use," suggested Neal. "Henry used it on Hook. He pissed himself. It was a wonderful moment. Also, you could tase Hook in the nuts again too... assuming he's recovered from his mental trauma of some charlatan shaman telling him that he had sex with his own prostitute mother."

"Oh, that totally happened."

Neal choked on his beer. "What... _seriously_?"

"Oh, yeah, it's another reason my father didn't want me hanging out at pirate pubs unless it was to kill sailors. He would tell me about how there was an infamous pirate whore who used our magic powers to cure her frequent cases of syphilis. She had been married to a cruel sailor who tortured and killed a mer-child caught in a net and abandoned her own children after which the only life she could make was as a whore. She had beautiful hair with magical powers and many a client who paid her a great deal... which she needed to pay for her syphilis medicine. One day her eldest son tricked her youngest son into sleeping with her. She didn't know, obviously, at the time he was her son, but later her eldest came and told her that was his revenge for her leaving them, after he'd learned she wasn't dead like their father had said, and because he had left them too and to be indentured into child slavery aboard merchant ships where he was molested by some troll kitten poker broker to protect his brother from the man's perverted ways, and so she drown herself after hearing the horrible tale of what was done to her son and those kittens. My second great grandfather turned her hair into a magical net with which to trap pirates."

"That's... both ironic and seriously creepy."

"What in our world isn't?" said Ursula as Emma entered, looking tense.

"What's wrong?" asked Neal, brows furrowing.

"What isn't?" retorted Emma.

"Well, Hook really did sleep with his mother, so turns out that shaman guy is legit. Also, his brother may have been kitten raped as a child... or something and his mother's scalp became a magical homicidal hairnet."

"Many a shaman tried to buy it," recalled Ursula. "They were only into killing white men, but it was some common ground between our people, particularly since like ninety-nine percent of our world's land-fairing population is whiter than rice."

"Riiiiiiiiight, okay," groaned Emma, "you can tell us more about the mer-folk-indiginous-human cracker-killing alliance on the way upstate, because Ruby called. Apparently there was a massacre at the compound."

"The incesty one?" Neal recalled.

"Yeah, that one. They think it was another Second Curse faction that objected to their objectionable beliefs in the weird feudal jockeying for land that none of them are legally entitled to squat on in the first place. Seems while we were in Camelot it's really turned into a mess of feuding encampments lead by low-level royals all trying to establish their own kingdoms free of modern interference."

"Sounds about right," scoffed Ursula. "Humans are always looking for reasons to hate, kill, and control each other. Y'all suck."

"Yeah, I know," sighed Emma, throwing some money on the bar. "No Coney Island or MOMA."

"It's not like you wanted to go to MOMA anyway," Neal pointed out.

"Yeah, but you did," Emma argued, "and I wanted to share in something you loved, even if I don't love it myself."

"That's sweet and _nauseating_ ," groaned Ursula. "Can we go?"

"Do you need to stop back at your place and pack?" asked Emma.

"What? Boxes of instant ramen and roach traps? As long as we can grab a Papaya on the way out of town, I'm good to go."

* * *

AN: Ursula and Neal both suffer from absentee (dead?) mothers and asshole fathers who sent them away and for all their posturing and blaming other were obviously and fault and clearly didn't look too hard. Also they were hurt by Hook. I could see them being friends. And, yes, Hook really did sleep with his mom. Did you have doubts?

Next up: Meanwhile, back at Zelena's ranch... I mean farm.


	60. Back at the Ranch er Farm

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE**

 **BACK AT THE RANCH... ER... FARM**

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... er... farm, an investigation was underway. Which, of course, didn't mean much in Storybrooke as a couple of flying monkeys could have probably carried out a police investigation as competently as the self-appointed and completely unqualified and untrained Sheriff's Department employees could.

"Well, at least Cruella isn't as psychotic as Emma originally said she would be," Snow considered as she loitered around Zelena's old barn with David and Ruby, who was an acting deputy until Emma returned... which was definitely awkward because even though Snow had an excuse now for her bad behavior, their friendship was pretty shaky.

"But she'll still want to resurrect Maleficent," sighed David, looking for clues.

It did appear that the farm had been recently occupied by the compound people, though also recently abandoned. Other evidence suggested the killers had used the farm to scope out the adjacent compound. The hay loft had been disturbed, scuff marks and shoe prints that suggested someone had been up their with binoculars - or a spyglass.

Dr. Whale had informed them that Hook's spyglass had been taken from his box of personal effects at the hospital.

But there were no video cameras in the psych ward and Regina had intentionally placed the one on the main floor pointing away from the once secret entrance, so either it was an employee or someone had swiped a key-card, and the hospital was pretty lax with those.

That the killers wouldn't just buy some binoculars did suggest the culprits were broke forest people who didn't know how paper money or credit cards worked let alone have any.

Plus, there was an empty one of those off-brand Cheetos bags, the kind he got free sometimes from the Dark Star because Sneezy/Mr. Clark gave them away when they were past the expiration date... or at least he used to before he donated old food to the 'food bank' that was just a food donation service for the Second Curse Crowd.

Which was kind of annoying. David had really liked getting those free fake Cheetos on his night patrols. Not that he was begrudging the forest people, because it wasn't their fault they got swept up in Snow's curse and needed charity to survive in a world very different from the one they knew how to make a living in.

It was just annoying that he'd gotten his job back and was now out of free fake Cheetos!

"Looks like they were into more than just free fake Cheetos," David noted, plucking a blunt from the floor. "I'll have to chat with Anton and Happy later."

"Just don't shut Anton down," Ruby interjected. "He provides a valuable _medical_ service. Like my waitressing-related chronic lower back pain."

"I don't care about the forest people getting high," sighed David, "I care about them getting high and murdering people... and eating my fake Cheetos. I thought stoners only ate Funyuns?"

"Sneezy doesn't give away Funyuns. The stoners buy them all out before the expiration date. This town has a _lot_ of stoners," said Ruby. "I mean, with all of the incest related trauma and relations, you'd have to either get drunk or high to not kill yourself, right?"

"You make our world sound like an amoral cesspool, Ruby," Snow groaned.

"It is an amoral cesspool. Probably because fairy tales are supposed to teach the people of this world how to live by _not_ emulating us. You ever think about that? I mean, Isaac was a shitty scribe, but whoever wrote us down to begin with was a real asshole," she declared.

"It's too early in the day to have a philosophical discussion about the nature of existence," David complained. "Why don't you go get some more evidence bags?"

"Sure thing, _Sheriff_ ," Ruby snorted with a mock salute before heading down the stairs.

"Why did Emma appoint her deputy?" groaned David.

"Because she knows Ruby hates us, so she'll be objective on the job instead of being your thug to beat up random people," Snow stated bluntly.

"I don't beat up _random_ people!" David exclaimed.

"Okay, maybe not random, but you punched Bo Peep in the face to try and get her crook to tell if Emma was still alive in the Enchanted Forest," Snow pointed out, "and now we can't get any meat, David!"

"Yes, well, you got us banned from the dry clearer _and_ the manicurist!"

"That bothers you? Were you planning to take Hook out for a manny-peddy and brow-wax when he gets out of the psych ward?"

"I meant that I have to put up with you leaving nail clippings all over the bathroom floor," David shot back, and Snow paused in her nail-filing.

"Maybe if you put the seat down I would put my clippings in the trash."

"So you're retaliating against my poor toilet etiquette with poor foot hygiene?"

"Basically, yes," Snow responded. "If I'd had my full wits about me, perhaps I would have devised something more direct like putting saran wrap over the bowl at night so you peed all over your feet."

"Ha ha."

David put another fiber in a bag and then asked, "Do you think Ruby's right? That... we're badly written? I mean, Neal keeps making jokes to that effect. Does he know something more than this whole crack universe Emma apparently accidentally created that she had to unmake? Does _Emma_ know something? Are we really nothing more than bad morality tales brought to life by some deity with a sick sense of humor?"

"I don't know. It's very existentialist. And I'm too sleep deprived to ponder it, David," Snow answered while returning to her fingernails.

The damn things had grown like weeds with her pregnancy hormones, and she didn't have servants here to take care of her manny-peddy needs, which was annoying since, as David had said, she was banned from the manicure shop - by the cousin of the Shangri-la-ineseian who ran the dry cleaner. _He_ had previously banned her during the "Town Tramp" incident and she'd just _maybe_ insulted his mother when she couldn't get her favorite cashmere sweater cleaned, and then the Curse broke, and how was she to know then that Regina killed his father for having provided imported silks for Snow's sixteenth birthday ball and not making the Queen's dress more glamorous than her stepdaughter's after which his mother committed suicide and the kids all had to join the army back in Magical China instead of emigrating to the Enchanted Forest, but then "Mr. Kim" and his cousin went AWOL only to end up caught in Regina's curse, that she only cast to get revenge on Snow White...

So, yeah, pretty much Mulan was the only Asian person in the Enchanted Forest who didn't hate her, but she was still in the Enchanted Forest... or Enchanted Forest adjacent since she parted ways with Robin and his Merry (but incompetent and chauvinistic) Men prior to the whole crushing David's heart to cast the Dark Curse again thing.

That was a shame, Snow mused. She missed Mulan. The woman had actual authentic bona fide honor, which was pretty much bullshit and lies in the Enchanted Forest. So, okay, back then Snow had _hated_ Mulan and had been more than willing to murder her both to get home and to not be reminded that she wasn't as honorable as she made everyone think she was. But twenty-twenty hindsight made her appreciate the warrioress more, and Snow was pretty sure Mulan would have kicked all of these forest squatters' butts over their stupid turf war so she could get back to making bird houses... or whatever it was she did now.

Snow sat down on a bail of hay and sulked as she watched Charming doing his fake sherriffing, like he actually knew what the hell he was doing considering _she_ was the better tracker between them and all he did was raise sheep and then get beaten up by a girl with braids and then impersonate a prince badly until she came into his life. Well, he did kill that dragon by pure dumb luck.

And he was cute and not bad in bed, and Snow did respect that he was generally more honorable than she was, less inclined to act selfishly, unless he was doing it to save her, because true love clearly blinded people and made them act like idiots until they ended up cursed in a town they couldn't seem to escape and the same miserable jobs as everyone else in the outside world.

Maybe Ruby's theory had some merit!

 _Ugh_ , Snow groaned, but her life _sucked_ in Storybrooke. At least David had a _fun_ job he wasn't qualified for. She taught little kids and if she wasn't _Snow White_ she'd still be teaching fourth graders instead of being able to convince the principal to let her teach sixth graders; honestly, she was not remotely qualified to teach anything but fourth grade, so it was no wonder Henry was skipping class all the time, but she'd chosen not to notice that she was dumbing down her own grandson and forcing him to go to _Belle_ for academic material, not to mention _the Internet_ where she wouldn't be shocked if he was dipping his pixie dust boosted puberty toes into porn, because she already knew that Hook had gotten someone to show _him_ how to use the Sheriff's Department computer to look at porn... _searching for pictures of skanks that resembled Emma_!

Apparently, that fetish had been going on since they all returned to this world, which explained why Hook had hung out at the station even when Emma wasn't there. It was creepy, and maybe if David and Emma had spent more time at the Station in general instead of whatever gallivanting about they did pretending to police the town, they'd have found Hook out instead of it coming down to the IT guy fixing the computers they destroyed in their battle royale!

And maybe if Henry's mothers cared a bit more about his well-being, Snow mused, it wouldn't have taken her own grandson telling her she could shove a birdhouse up her ass... and, yes, she'd spanked him for it... and then Regina had punched her in the face and Emma had gone into a rather frightening fit over it that now made Snow suspect her daughter had been physically abused as a child...

So... she had the bad mother thing going for her too, which meant it was basically at least a third generation thing with this family, and that was rather disturbing.

Snow had only wanted the best chance for her daughter, but she had made all the wrong decisions to make that happen, resulting in the exact opposite. And now Emma had lived some horrible life that sounded just as bad as being cursed for twenty-eight years, married to her own great grandfather (Snow was still trying process that connection to herself) and basically reduced to a soulless jerk who did a complete reversal of personality and ethics that had made her The Savior and resulted in the end of the world, because her parents were too guilty over their fuck-up and concerned with her still loving them to tell her that she was being a stupid and desperate skank with the emotional IQ of a teenage slut for replacing her integrity with a lady boner for a rapist fanboy who'd banged her own son's grandmother!

"Did you hear me?"

Snow blinked and turned toward her husband who'd moved to a different corner of the loft. "Hmm?"

"I asked if you'd gotten a text back from Regina yet."

"No, not yet," Snow answered, not thrilled with having to let Regina run this show.

Everything of late called into question her own trying to be BFFs with Regina after all the things that woman did to her and David _like trying to murder Emma as a baby_. If Emma was going to rethink her own childhood-regret-related transference onto Regina that had "inspired" an attempt to befriend Regina in and after Neverland, even with the fake memories Snow's stepmother had given Emma and Henry to escape Pan, then she was also going to rethink that relationship. After all, things had gotten quite nasty under Ingrid's spell, and it was clear that reformed or not, forgiveness or not, they were both still not remotely over how each had hurt the other.

And Snow was almost certain now that Regina had orchestrated the whole thing with Roland submitting that stupid name so she could get the position of Mayor back!

Well, the joke was on her. _Someone_ had given Belle the idea to run for Mayor and sent around a petition to call for a special election that was picking up steam, and there was no way the (former) Evil Queen would beat that bookworm who actually cared about other people _outside of this family_.

David gave her a concerned look. "Are you all right, hon? You look distracted?" He was actually thinking slightly devious and maybe Snow was going to prank Ruby for bitching at them all morning, but he didn't want to get into another argument and he was all about plausible deniability if that was the case and they ended up with a very angry werewolf.

"I'm just really really _really_ tired," answered Snow.

At another sigh from his wife, David resisted rolling his eyes and asked, "Okay, _what_?"

Snow grimaced before admitting, "It's just that waking up from my surgery... it feels like coming out of a fog. I didn't even know my judgment was clouded, but now I know what's really important about being a mother, and I know it wasn't my fault that I was sick, so the things that did that hurt people aren't entirely my fault, but I still feel guilty and I don't know how to make it better with Emma. She was still so... angry when we last talked, I could tell, upset that we weren't even friends anymore, that I'd pushed her away by trying to badly parent her. I know now that being a mother isn't about me, how that makes me feel or others look at me, it's about sharing that bond with my children, loving them unconditionally no matter how they turn out, allowing them to fail, but guiding them to make the right choices... even if I stumble along the way and go about it in occasionally deceitful ways that sounded good at the time."

"If that bond is so important," interjected Ruby, coming up the ladder, "why are you here instead of breast feeding your kid?"

" _Because_ ," Snow huffed, "Regina and Robin and bringing delegates from the different factions here to try and figure out what happened and I am-"

"Snow White, diplomat extraordinare," snorted Ruby. "At least to the people who haven't lived here long enough to know otherwise."

"Yes, thank you for that, _Red_."

"No problem, _Mary Margaret_."

Stepping into the barn, Regina called up, "Well, _this_ sounds promising. Everyone's at the house. Shall we?"

* * *

'Everyone' was a wide assortment of people, including an exhausted Robin Hood and disgruntled looking Prince Philip and Princess Aurora who'd tried their hand at town living before trading some of Aurora's jewelry to Mr. Gold for Jefferson's manor after that crazy tenant moved closer to town so he could see his daughter on weekends with court supervision after he ran off with Grace during Pan's Curse and she was kidnapped by trolls... or something.

Whatever that story actually was, the Prince and Princess occupied the last of the nonagricultural zoned residential properties outside of the town proper and also being on a hill that looked down on both the coastal community and the outlying farms in the other direction, that meant they might have seen something.

"We didn't see anything," said Philip.

"We try not to intrude on peasant matters," amended Aurora while fawning over Philip Junior.

"Naturally," grumbled Snow while thinking if more people met Aurora they'd change their minds about Snow as a leader and how _she_ "mistreated" peasants. Oh, Aurora had seemed to transform into a wonderful and brave person after Philip lost his soul and she came out of her stuck up bitch shell, but she was right back in it after saving his boring backside and getting knocked up. And if that wasn't bad enough, being a flying monkey had kept the snotty little cunt from putting on a single ounce of pregnancy weight!

"What's that supposed to mean?" Aurora exclaimed.

"It means, you're a spoiled brat!"

"Snow!" David croaked.

"Oh _come on_ , David. I know you agree with me! She's a spoiled brat and he's a spineless pretty boy, and together they betrayed us and everyone we care about to save their own useless asses! If they had just told us upfront about Zelena, Neal wouldn't have died, I wouldn't have had to cast the Curse by crushing your heart, and we could potentially all be living happily ever after!"

"Spare me!" Aurora scoffed. "Everyone knows you cursed your unborn baby so you wouldn't have to be an actual parent."

"I had an _illness_ ," Snow growled, "that affected my judgment. What's _your_ excuse? Monkey herpes?"

"You take that back!" Aurora demanded, pulling a dagger and advancing.

David intervened, his own sword going quickly to the auburn-haired princess' throat. He preferred diplomacy, but truthfully, Snow was entirely right about how he viewed these two and every time he encountered them he felt less and less sympathy for Gold's wraith taking Philip's soul and Hook pulling out Aurora's heart. The only good thing to come of it was Mulan being free of the both of them!

"Threaten my wife again," David warned, "and you'll be moving out of that mansion into a jail cell, _Princess_."

"Perhaps," Philip stepped in, "you should keep a muzzle on your wife."

"Perhaps," Snow shot back, "you should wear a sign that says 'Misogynist Asshole'. The only good thing your 'true love's kiss' ever did for your wife is wake her from that sleeping curse and give her a month of freedom to realize that women actually have brains and can fight as good as any man - before she made the mistake of retrieving your soul. Your _soul-sucking_ soul that regressed her back into a spoiled little dimwit who thinks her purpose in life is fawning over you with carefully quaffed 'I just got fucked good' hair.

"You want to know why your so-called friend Mulan left you both?" Snow continued nastily, "It's because she was disgusted to see what your love did to each other and know that she enabled this codependent bullshit romance. Honestly why are you even 'true love'?" she scoffed. "Charming and I had to fight to be together. We fought battles together and had many harrowing adventures. All you did was get contractually obligated to marry by some fairies that raised Aurora and didn't even meet until her father was killed by Maleficent and you were supposed to get married, but you both got cursed on Aurora's sixteenth birthday."

Snow crossed her arms and glowered at Aurora, "And don't even try to pretend that ten years under a sleeping curse makes you legal. You're still a stupid girl with a cradle-robbing husband who thinks a woman's place is producing heirs. Thank the gods Mulan realized what a hot mess you both were and left before she got stuck with your spoiled little Lolita ass!

"You should both be grateful that the age of consent in Maine is sixteen," she directed at Philip, "or you'd be Prince Statutory Rapist."

"Shut up!" Aurora hissed. "You don't get to judge either of us! I wouldn't be stuck in this horrible world if it wasn't for your selfishness! You could have taken care of Zelena in some other way! But you just had to protect your stupid replacement child at all costs!"

Things looked ready to come to blows again and this time Regna conjured a fireball and shouted, "ENOUGH! Look, none of us want to be here. Do you think I enjoyed being dragged back to this prison where the majority of the residents want me burned at the stake? But arguing over who is most to blame for that is not relevant to why we are gathered here today. A large group of people were _murdered_ in a _grizzly_ fashion less than a mile from here, and while none of us liked them, and while we're all aware of the accusations of child-bride kidnapping and worse than the usual levels of incest around here, the culprits have to be identified and brought to justice."

"Justice?" scoffed a Dwarf who wasn't one of the seven exiles. "When were you ever brought to justice for _your_ mass murdering? Or cursing the first group of people?"

"YEAH!" was the collective shout.

"Maybe," David interjected, "we should table justice in favor of just the piece of mind that we know whomever did this, it was a one time operation in... defense of the greater community that went too far, perhaps due to the circulating rumors that there is a rampant pot addiction around here coupled with rumors that Anton is using a secret stash of pixie dust to fertilize his crop, and apparently that flower pollen, when not processed correctly in some special fairy lab and used in minimal doses, has a tendency to alter brain chemistry and enhance irrational and violent behavior."

"In short," said Regina, "whomever did this has a solid defense, other than the narcotics possession, and since Storybrooke doesn't technically have laws against _pixie dust_ use, it's a formality. We just want to know who did it so we can move on _and_ try to facilitate a better relationship between the towns people and the forest people so that disagreements don't have to be solved by mass murder and mutilation."

"I might have seen something," spoke up a man who was previously a troll and lived with his other troll-people in the junkyard. "I was working on the crane at the junk yard that night. I saw two people walking through the wildlife refuge gate toward that path that swings around behind Gold's cabin. It'd be the best way to surprise those child-stealing freaks, to come at them from the park."

"Who are you calling 'child-stealing freaks, troll?" accused the Dwarf.

"Trolls only kidnap children for ransom. We only kill adult humans. We are not sickos!"

"You eat kittens!" David reminded.

"But we don't steal them, we are supplied with kittens by unscrupulous humans," the former troll stated, giving David a knowing look.

"I did not steal and sell kittens!" David exclaimed, exasperated. "How many times do I have to say that it must have been my brother impersonating me-"

"And hanging out with Kristoff?" Snow inquired, arms inquired.

"Oh, come on, Kristoff is an idiot who probably spends most of his time sitting in a reindeer pen smoking pot. James probably met him on some 'diplomatic' trip for George and took advantage of him to try and steal gold from some trolls. Let it go, Snow!"

"Back to the two people," interjected Ruby. "Just two?"

"Well, there could have been more," said the former Troll. "I finished up and went to bed around one, maybe fifteen minutes after I saw them. Didn't think anything of it. Assumed it was just two teenagers going up to the lookout to makeout. Wouldn't have been the first time. Of course, Bill and I went up there in the morning to see if they'd slipped and fallen off the cliff as they occasionally do so we could pilfer their jewelry before calling the authorities, but sadly there were no bodies. Although, in retrospect, if they were involved in the murdering, less of a disappointment."

Snow looked on in disgust and exclaimed, "How many teenagers have fallen off that cliff?"

"Not counting since the Curse broke, a couple a year," he answered. "It'd be weird if no one in town ever died, of course, so between the cliff-slipping and car wrecks at the town line, I suppose it kept things seemingly normal, apart from the lack of births, of course."

"You think no one ever succumbs to fatalities around here?" sighed Regina. "People tried to leave town every now and then and were killed in car wrecks. As for the cliff thing, I have no idea why it kept demanding teenagers falling to their demise. Perhaps it satisfied the Dark Curse somehow since it was apparently involved in Zoso's contribution to The Frontlands' genocide by drawing on the life-forces of Ogre-murdered teenagers... or something. I was only half paying attention when Rumple explained that years ago.

"Anyway," she continued, "since the Curse broke it's been a hodgepodge of teenagers and people fleeing various catastrophes. A park ranger when Gold summoned that Wraith. That giant sent a car off the road and over the cliff. An entire family got knocked to their deaths by a tree during that Doomsday Crystal thing. Some nature enthusiast slipped on that snow chick's ice after she wandered out of this barn on her roundabout ten hour walk into town. Might have been a few suicides."

"How the hell do we not know about this!?" exclaimed David.

"How did you not know or care about anything who died during 'various catastrophes' before?" scoffed Regina. "At least I visited my father's grave often enough to take note of the marked rise in grave digging following the town nearly being destroyed."

"But... shouldn't the Sheriff's Department be notified of that sort of thing?"

Shrugging, Regina considered, "Oh, I'm sure the Department was called, but the switchboard doesn't consider curse-related-collateral damage an emergency worth forwarding to the Sheriff's cell and you and Miss Swan have a nasty habit of just deleting the office voicemail, assuming it's all about cats in trees and parking tickets."

"You really are a bad Sheriff," Robin spoke up. "I mean Nottingham was a _corrupt_ Sheriff, but-"

"Oh, shut it!" David snapped at him. "You're a piss-poor thief and not remotely honorable banging the woman who murdered your wife! You have a serious problem and at least Regina had the sense to realize it before you let her ruin your son the way she ruined Henry."

"HEY!" Regina hissed. "I did not ruin him!"

"And that's based on what, not listening to everything he said last week under that spell?" Snow countered. "Please, you and Emma both did a piss-poor job of parenting that kid-"

"You let him drive down a crowded street!"

"I never said we did a good job of grandparenting him."

"Okay, can we get back to the meeting!" David exclaimed and looked around at everyone. "I'm sorry that I began this town's post-curse existence with a bullshit speech to get everyone to stay and haven't lived up to my responsibilities. But this is an opportunity for _all_ of us to be a better community. Also, my wife had given me syphilis."

"Which I got from my mother when she was pregnant with me, not from sex with filthy bandits and pirates!" Snow interjected, which did not go over with the filthy bandits and pirates in attendance.

"Hey, I shower regularly!" Smee snapped, "and I _still_ haven't gotten reimbursed for the damage to my lobster-slash-house boat where I would be living instead in this forest dump if I had gotten any insurance money for it!"

Regina retorted, "You can't collect insurance money for a policy purchased by a man my mother turned into a fish and you just stole his boat and started using it!"

"Why not? Finders keepers!"

"That's not a thing!" said David.

"Look, back to the possible murderous thugs advanced scouting team," Snow cut in. "You said you thought they were teenagers going to make out, so they were a man and a woman?"

"Because teenagers of the same sex can't go to Make-Out Point?" argued the troll-person. "That's very bigoted of you."

"I didn't mean-stop trying to put words in my mouth, Troll, or I'll turn you into a bug like I did your cousins!"

"With what? Your princess farts? The darkest fairy in town is Tinkerbell, and the only dust she distributes is the kind tainting the weed."

"Wait, _Tinkerbell_ is running the illegal pixie dust weed fertilizer scam?" Ruby exclaimed, then scowled. "I knew she was acting shady!"

"Please, she's _always_ shady," scoffed Regina. "But back to the not-explicitly-stated-gender-specific trespassers..."

"Fine, they were a man and a woman," the troll-person conceded. "If I was my _real_ self, I'd have been able to catch their scents on the wind, but alas I am stuck in hideous human form in this world."

"Maybe I can still track their trail, though!" Ruby exclaimed.

And the game was afoot!

* * *

AN: So, I'm not the only one who thinks Philip turned Aurora into a bitchy little brat, right? Like she went from wonderful Xena/Gabby potential with Mulan to tossing her 'I just got fucked' hairdo around, squeeing over getting knocked up two minutes later, and then bitching about the world while fawning over her dumb monkey baby like she was back in the mindset good little princesses get married and pregnant and complain about how the nasty Land Without Magic world doesn't give them the ass-kissing they deserve. (Who thinks David really was involved in kitten poker smuggling, and who thinks it was James taking advantage of Kristoff mistaking him for David to pull one over on some trolls to get Arendellian gold for George which later led to David being mistaken for Fake David by trolls in the Enchanted Forest as someone who tried to swindle them in kitten-smuggling-related matters? And were they bridge trolls in the Enchanted Forest or are Rock Trolls much creepier than you thought? There has to be some connection between trolls that live under stone bridges and trolls made of stone, right?)

Next up: Lily gets Hooked.


	61. Fury Road

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: The kitten thing is not canon. I figured since the show ripped-off Buffy with the stabby Hook to Hell thing, I'd borrow kitten poker. I'm not sure where the teen sacrifice thing is going, if anywhere at the moment, other than the theorized Dark Curse origin being related to the Ogre War and child-killing. All I know is that after last night's episode, I would happily sacrifice the OUAT versions of Herc & Meg: Clueless Teen Romantic Partner Plot Device & ******Clueless Teen Romantic Partner Plot Device's Disgustingly Weak Teen Romantic Partner. Animated Megara would punch that doormat in the tits, kick Hades in the balls, and tell Hook to go fuck himself while she saved her own ass!****

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-SIX**

 **FURY ROAD**

"It's so _quaint_ ," Cruella deVil remarked as she took a seat in the roadside diner with Ursula, her old friend who was really more of an acquaintance equally beholding to Maleficent to survive in the Enchanted Forest without being married off to some Neanderthal or raped and killed.

Plus the whole needing some magical supplements to deal with having been essentially cursed by such assholes. It was prime inspiration for her life's work here of scamming old creeps out of money. Unfortunately, her last creep was also running a Ponsey Scheme and committing tax evasion, which left her with nothing but her car and her coat.

Which were really all she needed in the end, along with a stiff drink.

"It's crap, just say it," the young woman snorted while handing out menus.

"I don't use such unsophisticated language. Now, I will have an Old Fashioned."

"At ten in the morning?"

"It's happy hour somewhere, darling, and as I am currently without a house due to a little misunderstanding with the IRS, I could use a drink. Now, what specials do you have? My darling Ursula is allergic to nuts."

"Your name is _Ursula_?" Lily uttered in a 'you are bullshitting me' voice.

-276"My parents were Russian spies," said Ursula. "You know, like that show, only they were black, which is a great cover really. Who's going to expect some black people of being commie spies? I'll have the waffles. And coffee. Irish."

Lily took the order down and told Cruella in a bored voice, "Our specials are buttermilk pancakes with strawberries or blueberries and creme freche. French toast with a side of fruit. And eggs over easy with maple honey glazed sausages."

"Surprise me!" Cruella decided.

As Lily rolled her eyes and walked away, Emma and Neal were outside waiting for the woman to take a cigarette break, which they figured would be soon, because interacting with Cruella for more than five minutes would make even nonsmokers take a cigarette break.

Sure enough, Lily emerged from the back of the diner with a bag of trash and a pack of smokes and gave Neal and annoyed look for rooting through the dumpster.

"Jesus, there are even hobos in Vermont?" she huffed. "Get lost, buddy, or I'll-"

Lily didn't finish that sentence due to Emma tasing her in the back.

In short order they had her tied up in the back of the U-Haul.

"So... pancakes?"

"You're buying."

* * *

For a crappy roadside diner, it really did have good maple syrup. Emma bought several bottles and stowed them in the backseat (plus what Cruella bought because she wouldn't dare put the stuff on her upholstery in case it leaked) before rock-paper-scissoring the keys and hopping in the driver's seat to lead the way back to Storybrooke.

Neal was fiddling with the radio when there was a sudden _thud_ on the roof of the car.

"What the-"

There was another thud and Emma realized, "She's on the roof!"

"What, _Lily_!?"

"Who else!? _Superman_?"

Emma slammed on the brakes and Lily went tumbling down the hood onto the road.

"At least she's not a naked blubbering pirate," mused Neal, getting out, only to have a gun suddenly pointed at him.

"Hey, that's mine!" Emma hissed.

"You kept your gun in the trailer!?" Neal exclaimed.

"The gun from my apartment in New York!"

"That you left in New York after subletting your apartment to hispsters and packed in the trailer!?"

"I forgot about it, okay!?"

Lily fired the weapon, shattering the windshield.

"SHUT UP! I KNOW WHO YOU ARE! AND I KNOW YOU RUINED MY LIFE!"

"Technically, it was my parents-"

The sound of another car distracted Lily and Emma kicked the weapon from her hands and drew her own. "Don't move!"

Cruella got out of her suped-up roadster looking very put out. "I was expecting a proper car chase!"

"You were _expecting_ a car chase!?" Emma exclaimed.

"I might have unlocked the trailer. She seemed the type who could get out of her cuffs. Ursula mentioned that you mentioned that this had all happened once before in an alternate timeline and there was an exciting car chase. I've always wanted to race!"

"Well, thanks a lot, _Smokey and the Bandit_ ," she directed at the pair. "How was that even going to work, chasing an SVU pulling two tons of junk?"

"My stuff is not junk," grumbled Neal, "unless you mean your ugly ass paintings."

"They are not ugly!"

"They came with your place and you stole them!"

"Because the rent was insane and the doorman kept letting crazies into the building and I am going to class up my new place with them!"

"And Mal said we fought like an old married couple," Ursula snorted at Cruella.

"If you two want to have make-up sex in your car," Cruella told Emma and Neal, "we'll wait, but do move all of my maple syrup to the trunk first, darlings."

"We are not having 'make up sex'! And now we need to get a new windshield!" Emma growled as her phone chimed with a text. She read the message and swore, "Oh, _goddamn it_ , can't Storybrooke go two minutes without someone getting murdered!?"

* * *

AN: Very anticlimactic. Sorry. I hate Lily and her dumbshit story. The trailer/roof thing was inspired by _The Walking Dead_ episode in which Rick and Daryl meet "Jesus".

Next up: Things are going from bad to worse in Storybrooke.


	62. Dead Forest Residents

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN**

 **DEAD FOREST RESIDENTS**

"RETREAT!" Robin Hood shouted, giving up trying to hold off the attack and making a run for it.

It all started when they found Aurora and Philip murdered in their gazebo where they'd clearly been dragged after being pulled from their beds and then killed. Everyone had been on high alert, but none of them had really expected that when night fell the mysterious mass murderers would attack!

"WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM!?" Regina yelled right back, trying to create a shield with magic, but an arrow flew right through it, nailing Friar Tuck in the back. "AND WHY THE HELL ISN'T MY MAGIC WORKING!?"

"I don't know!" Robin gasped, "but it would explain why all those wards the compound people claimed to use were worthless."

"And here I was hoping those wards were bullshit! _Damn it_!" Regina swore as another arrow whizzed past her head and took out a Dwarf. The arrows just kept coming, like an assault riffle version, or an arrow-firing or conjuring spell that she could not counter!

" _We have to get out of here! We have to get past whatever wards they've put up! Run faster_!"

" _I'm running as fast as I can, Regina_!"

It was dark and there was that annoying lake fog as they stumbled in the direction of the hospital. The arrows kept coming, slamming into tree trunks like bullets, until finally Regina felt the anti-magic bubble pop and she pulled the energy around her, transporting them to her crypt.

"That was a close," she gasped and turned to find an arrow protruding from Robin's chest, right through his heart. He looked mildly surprised, and then his gaze went blank and he crumpled to the floor.

"NO!" Regina cried. She reached into her ex-lover's chest and pulled out his heart, the clearly magic-imbued arrow piercing the crystalline organ that cracked and shattered in her hand.

"I won't lose you like this! I won't go through this again!" she wept, pulling out her own heart and splitting it. She shoved one half into Robin's chest... but nothing happened

A voice from behind tisked, "Oh, dear, you actually thought that was going to work? Your heart is too blackened, Regina, even for this sad little attempt at true love."

The voice slightly wrong, but the inflections were all there and Regina spun, half heart in her hand to face... Snow White. Snow White dressed in her mother's blue sequined gown.

"It was _you_!?" Regina gasped, horrified. "Mother-"

"Oh, I'm not Cora, not really," laughed Snow. "She's permanently dead. But let's just say... fascists of her personality were not entirely erased by the good doctor.

" _David_ ," she snapped, producing a heart from her pocket.

David obediently emerged from the shadows to stand at her side, "Yes, my love."

"You really never should have gotten the Dark One to summon that mad scientist to revive Daniel," Snow told Regina. "He can't help himself with his experiments. He could have succeeded that night, of course, in a fashion, but Rumplestiltskin wanted him to fail so you'd continue your lessons and cast his spell. Of course, in this world, the resurrection didn't work, not just because magic is different but, well, you actually _can't_ bring back the dead in any world without horrible consequences. Viktor brought back _something_ in Daniel's form, but not Daniel, as you know. Only vestiges of his memory remained enough to recognize you, and conscience enough to be aware that he was in soulless torment.

"I believe Emma knows something about that," Snow mused. "And Whale did find some loopholes, but magic will always find a way around them. Mix magic and science and there's bound to be some success... but also... well... collateral damage."

"You murdered dozens of people!" Regina exclaimed.

"Yes, but they were all bad. Well, mostly bad. Those compound people. That Dwarf who stood in the way of Dreamy and Nova finding true love together..."

"And Friar Tuck? And _Robin_?"

"Friar Tuck diddled little kids," said Snow. "I came upon him when Robin's men passed through Haven. I dare say, if there was one good thing to you and Robin getting together, it was getting the poor boy away from that monster... but then you dumped him, and I can't disagree, given Locksley is an idiot who is witlessly best friends with a pedophile and in love with his wife's murderer. Now, Roland is free of all of that horror."

"Free? You orphaned a little boy, Snow... or Mother... or whoever the hell you think you are right now!"

"You orphaned many little boys, Regina. But is it such a bad thing when his real family were such awful people? A group of drunk, unemployed, child-diddling idiots? I'm sure someone qualified can adopt him," said Snow. "Maybe Archie. Sure, he accidentally got Geppeto's parents killed, but he was just trying to kill his parents, who were assholes. Just like Snow killed me, because, let's face it, I was a horrible person without my heart. I wasn't the mother you needed me to be."

"And what's your excuse now?" Regina spat. "Apparently, you have both, and you're soulmates or some annoying garbage, who share one metaphysical something or other."

"Well, that's true, we share Cora's mind and her heart," conceded Snow, "but I suppose there are some... incompatibility issues to be worked out since I still have my own heart and David still has his own brain. Overloaded metaphysical circuits, you might say."

"That drove you to mass murder to prove your motherly devotion!?" Regina cried and conjured a fireball. "You are batshit crazy!"

Regina launched the fireball at Snow/Cora who squeezed David's heart and he threw himself in front of the fire.

Swearing, Regina put out his ablaze clothes before he was badly hurt, but that gave her sometimes nemesis time to make a run for it. And David, of course, immediately started trying to knock her out.

"She doesn't want to hurt you!" he rasped. "She just wants you to make the most of your life and not settle for anything less than what makes you truly happy!"

"I DON'T DESERVE TO BE TRULY HAPPY!" Regina shouted and David released her and gave her a cocky smile.

"Took you long enough."

* * *

AN: So, Snow White/David is Cora is the mass murderer who just killed Robin Hood and it was all to teach Regina a lesson? Crazy, huh!

Next up: Emma returns to this clusterfuck of a family.


	63. Walt Disney's Spinning Frozen Head

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: Okay, so you're all probably wondering how did Whale get Cora's organs? It's simple! Regina used the same magic she used on Daniel to preserve her mother's corpse seconds after her death. Now, how exactly Regina preserved Daniel's corpse when she didn't know magic and he had a gravestone and only later was shown to be in a glass coffin with a pause button on his expiration dates so Whale could revive him using science and have the only thing wrong with him be his lack of a soul... well... don't worry your pretty heads about that MASSIVE CANON PLOTHOLE. It's like trying to figure out how the fuck Hook's corpse is being toted away on a gurney and minutes later he's taking a boatride in the lake next to where he kicked it Angelus style and somehow both corporal breathing people are hanging out with physical manifestations of souls and they all get a nice tickling in some CGI fire or acid baths in cheesy VFX rivers! Here, some residents are organ donars. For the others, Whale has an agreement with the grave digger, so after the funerals are over the graves aren't refilled with dirt until after he can procure what he needs. So, you're probably asking, did he poach Neal's parts? Of course not! What if Rumple tried to bring him back and found he had no heart and brain!? Also, Whale is focusing on magical people. In this case, he was doing an experiment: if you put organs from magical people into tissue-compatible non-magical people, will they get magic? And is magic in the brain or the heart? The answer would seem to be 'yes' and 'both', but only for a short while. Like Jay Garrick using Velocity to temporarily reconnect to the Speed Force, the Apprentice's wand temporarily jolted Cora's organs into a sort of magical harmony, but it was temporary and obviously with horrible consequences.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT**

 **WALT DISNEY'S SPINNING FROZEN HEAD  
**

"I can't believe I stole another stolen car," Emma groaned, slumped in the passenger seat of a blue Chevel as they passed over the town line.

"It is pretty sweet, though," grinned Neal, enjoying the old stick-shift that had been Lily's most recent project in the illegal chop-shop run out of the back of the garage by the diner. "And everyone'll just think Lily ran off with it, so we're in the clear!"

"I suppose so. Though it doesn't make up for Aurora and Philip being _murdered_."

"Maybe not, but they were selfish assholes," Neal reminded. "I know Mulan loved Aurora, but she deserved better."

"Their son has been orphaned," Emma countered.

"Well, that's par for the course where we come from," Neal countered.

"Which is what I'm supposed to change!" huffed Emma. "I can't leave town without it all going back to shit!"

"Yeah, okay," conceded Neal, "it's a setback, but Regina said they found the killers, right?"

"Yeah, I suppose that's something," Emma sighed and Neal pulled over where Belle was standing, holding the scroll to get into town.

"I thought Regina would be here to let them in?" she questioned.

"She's... preoccupied with the killers," explained Belle.

"And you're all right hitching a ride with the two women who held you hostage?"

"Not really, but it's nice of you to ask."

Emma frowned at that Neal looked ready to protest, but Belle was already walking away and giving the scroll a toss.

It was a ten minute drive to the Sheriff's Station and that's where they found Regina standing, glaring at Emma's parents, each in separate cells, apparently sleeping. For some reason, her mother was wearing an uncomfortably familiar navy blue ballgown and David's shirt was covered in blood.

"This can't be good," Emma sighed.

"No, it can't," grunted Regina, her crossed arms somehow going even tenser. "Meet Storybrooke's latest mass murderers."

" _My parents_ killed all those people?"

"That's right. Including Robin," she growled out.

"Wait... _Robin_? He's dead?" Neal uttered, startled. "Now I feel a bit bad about being kind of an asshole last time we had a bro-to-bro talk..."

Regina glared at him.

"What happened?" asked Emma.

Regina let out a sigh, then explained, "Whale used my mother's brain and heart in the transplant and apparently some of the residual memories and magic remained causing some sort of dissociate disorder," explained Archie from his seat at one of the desks. "I evaluated them both before Dr. Whale administered a sedative. Neither of them was aware of what they were doing at night... and don't ask my why it happened at night, though it has been moonless, so perhaps it's some opposite of ware-magic type thing as they did both undergo a transformative process that involved magic, particularly that shady wizard's wand."

"Which I am going to find and incinerate," growled Regina.

"But why were they doing it?" asked Neal, bewildered. "I mean, okay, the compound people, but Aurora and Philip? That's extreme. And _Robin_? I know he was kind of an idiot, but-"

"To teach me a lesson," huffed Regina, crossing her arms.

"Apparently," interjected Archie, "the remnants of Cora's memories were integrated into Snow's unconscious in such a way that she wanted Regina to admit that the happy ending she has been so hell-bent on getting for herself is not deserved on account of all of her evil deeds as a terrible monarch. That she did not fall far from the apple tree, as it were. It seems Cora had some revelations shortly before her death that were strong enough to imprint despite methods both medical and magic to remove any residual essence of the woman."

"So... she was killing people out of some messed up maternal love?" cringed Emma, amending, "Been there, done that. Ugh. What a mess."

"It seems even with her heart," sighed Regina, "my mother had a very... warped sense of affection. But also it seems likely the dark spot in Snow's heart related to killing her played some role, triggered some magic when Tinkerbell used that wand to jump-start my mother's heart. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if that old geezer hadn't foreseen and planned this all as some revenge from beyond the grave as he was offing himself."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," agreed Neal. "He did scheme for like three hundred years at least to do all kinds of messed up shit. And he probably wasn't pleased with you trying to free Isaac to rewrite your story. Plus, I think Robin mentioned once stealing from his mansion back in our world. I guess the guy was killing two birds with one stone as it were."

"And orphaning Roland," sighed Archie. "I'm looking into fostering him. After talking to him... well... I can't say I fault Snow for killing Friar Tuck."

"What did _he_ do?" asked Emma.

"It seems eh was a pedophile," Regina explained with grimace.

Neal shook his head and considered, "Well, now we know why Roland was happy to spend time with his mother's murderer-slash-replacement."

"I don't need a sibling loophole to turn you into a toad," Regina hissed at him.

Neal just rolled his eyes, thinking he should probably feel worse about Robin being dead, but he'd been dead, and while the guy was kind of a tool, it was more lack of intelligence than maliciousness, and you couldn't damn someone to hell for being a mimbo.

"And, as I said, I won't be taking Roland," Regina explained. "Dr. Hopper thinks it would cause him further trauma once he grew up and learned the truth about his mother's death."

"And I know that from personal experience," Archie sighed.

"Things not going well with Geppetto, huh?" asked Emma.

"To put it mildly."

0"Will they remember any of this when they wake up?" asked Emma.

"They're still not aware of their nocturnal activities," said Archie, "beyond 'waking' with sunrise and being bewildered by their appearances. I used hypnosis and, as I said, then Dr. Whale sedated them. We'll have to tell them, of course, but I felt it best that they had some sleep given they do not seem to have experienced REM sleep for several days, which will just make processing all of it more difficult."

"And the rest of the town?" Neal wondered, "what do we tell them?"

"That the killer was some monster that has been dealt with," Regina answered. "They don't need to know. They hate Snow and Charming enough as it is, and it really wasn't their fault, much as I would _love_ to blame them. It wasn't even Whale's considering we all agreed to this insanity without considering the consequences and he is rather ignorant of magic."

"Regina is right," agreed Archie, "it won't do this town any good. But David and Snow do need to be aware of possible side-effects. While it seems that in accomplishing her 'task' with Regina the bits of Cora's personality were finally purged and Snow's memories and identity fully integrated, that doesn't mean there might not be some other consequence of the unusual connection that she and David now share - different from sharing Snow's heart, but still... magically uncertain."

"I'd like to say," Regina mused, "that the misplaced guilt they both feel will make _me_ feel somewhat better, accept that it will probably involve Snow demanding I rip out her heart and crush it again and eating more junk food than Hook - and her ass can't afford to get bigger, not when she clearly lacks the body type to pull it off."

"Don't be mean, Regina," Archie scolded. "Snow has dealt with body image problems her whole life. Her mother used to tell her that she was fat as a child and as a consequence she did not eat enough when she was pregnant with Emma, which is probably yet another reason," he imparted to Emma, "you have certain... deficiencies. Physiological function can be adversely affected by a mother suffering malnutrition during gestation. Low second- or third-trimester weight gain has also been shown to be associated with spontaneous preterm delivery risk, which is probably why you came two weeks earlier than the Blue Fairy had anticipated."

"Great," sighed Emma, "another reason I'm messed up. Good old Gradma Eva."

"Yes, scoffed Regina, "I'd like to think Hades is tripping her in the Underworld-"

"She wasn't there. Or at least I didn't see her. I guess she must have repented and become a good person before she got poisoned."

Shrugging, Neal interjected, "Hey, I used the darkest magic in existence to trade my soul for the Dark One and I got a free pass to... well... not Heaven, but free of being abused in cliché mythological realms."

"Yeah, I'd take real Purgatory any day over the Underworld with that gas-leak haired douche," agreed Emma. "And the red-filtered sky, that got old _real_ fast. Plus the whole everyone having grave stones but they're not in the graves. Yeah, real symbolic. And dumb."

"Dumb like getting everyone alive in the Underworld grave stones too? I'm surprised Regina didn't throw into one of those fire pits... although they don't seem to actually do more than tickle you. But that was the Underworld in a screwed up reality, so maybe in this one it would actually incinerate you."

"You got us all killed in the Underworld!?" Regina snapped at Emma.

"Not... exactly...?"

"Ugh, now you really sound like your mother," she sighed. "You know what? I don't care. Either way, you were probably being an idiot encouraged by your idiot parents. I don't have time for any of your guilt."

"Then you can use your time for your own guilt over what you did to Maleficent while helping to bring her back from the quasi-dead dust monster state under the Library."

Regina groaned. "Do I _really_ have to?"

"So her daughter doesn't kill us all, yes. And she's actually remarkably well adjusted."

"In your _crazy_ reality, but in this one?"

"Fair point. But she does have great fashion sense across realms."

Regina considered this a moment then conceded, "Well, it would be nice to talk fashion with someone who doesn't consider haute couture flannel, denim, and L.L. Bean ponchos. Do you have all the... whatever is required to bring her back?"

"Cruella has some rattle thingie that Maleficent put some of her magic in or some shit," responded Neal.

"How eloquent."

"Well, excuse me for talking like a ghetto peasant street urchin who spent three hundred years being tormented by uneducated gang members and then had to fight sewer rats for pizza."

"You fought sewer rats for pizza? _Really_?" snorted Emma.

"Ugh, I hate you both so much," Regina grumbled. "Can we just get this over with? Preferably as quickly as possible so I can go home and drink a bottle of wine to forget that my long time nemesis was compelled by my mother's transplanted organs to murder my ex-lover soulmate to teach me to be a better person?"

"Regina," Archie began, "you really shouldn't use grief as an excuse to-"

" _Shut up, cricket or I'll turn you back into one and step on you_!'

Archie winced and shut up and watched the trio go. With a sigh he lamented, "Fine, just leave me to deal with these two jerks. Don't consider how it adversely affects Dr. Hopper's sanity!"

He still suffered nightmares of that time Pinocchio sowed him into Snow White's corset and he almost suffocated, trapped in her underboob sweat only to end up nearly drowning in her beer. It was times like that he really felt cursed... and was relieved to return to this world where he was human again and could form real bonds... even if right now it was only with Pongo.

The sound of the door opening again caused Archie a moment of hope that maybe they'd reconsidered and at least would offer to bring him lunch... but instead it was an unfamiliar, rather thuggish looking woman in her mid-twenties to mid-thirties who looked like she'd probably wasted some of her beauty and youth shooting heroine or something equally detrimental.

"Can I help you?" asked Archie, warily.

"Yeah," Lily answered, "you can take a nap."

"Pardon?"

She explained by punching the poor shrink in the face and knocking him out cold.

With a cruel smile curing her lips, Lily approached the jail cell and gazed upon her enemies. "Snow White and Prince Charming, we meet at last..."

* * *

AN: So, that's the Snow White arc. I have no idea who thought up the dumbshit idea to have Jiminy in Snow White's boobs as the reason she appeared to be having a heart attack in "Souls of the Departed", but it sure makes it increasingly obvious that the show is written by men with the emotional IQ of adolescent boys... and the occasional woman with the IQ of an adolescent boy.

Next up: Have you ever wondered if "The Gang" bothered to clean up Greg and Tamara's torture room after killing those flying monkeys that were their friends but it took the rest of the season for any of them to say, "Hey those are our friends don't kill them!" and that somehow was _Hook_ and no one ever mentioned that they had previously slaughtered like a dozen of their transmutated hommies at the Cannery?


	64. Puff the Magic Dragon

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FORTY-NINE**

 **PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON... WAS ACTUALLY ONE CRAZY BITCH**

When Snow White came to she was strapped down to a cold surface, unable to move. Bright light shining in her eyes obscured her surroundings until the glow was eclipsed by a person moving into view.

"Wakey wakey, Princess...or is it Queen?" an unfamiliar voice inquired sassily as her eyes struggled to focus. When they finally did, she saw a dark haired woman with pale skin and pinched expression.

"Wha-what's going on?" Snow asked, confused. She felt groggy like after her surgery.

"Well, a lot it seems," her captor cackled. "I overheard your family talking about how you and your hubby suffered some sort of magical transference fugue state from an apparently psychotic bitch named 'Cora' and spent the last couple of nights slaughtering people to prove to 'Regina' that she's still a villain who needs to hold herself accountable for her own evil shit... or something."

"Wait... _what_!?" Snow gasped.

"You murdered a lot of people and don't remember it, including Robin Hood who is apparently a real person... or was. I'm Lily by the way," said Lily.

"R-Robin... we... killed... but... what?" Snow stammered out.

Lily patted her cheek. "Oh, don't worry your pretty but crazy brain containing head about it. You'll be too busy screaming in agony to ponder your emotional torment at murdering your sort-of friend... but you gotta ask yourself, was he really worth the effort to keep alive if he apparently had a creepy fetish for banging women who murdered his wife? Plus, one of his best friends apparently was diddling little kids including his own, so the guy had to be either a total creep or a clueless idiot. I'd give you points if you'd actually made the conscious effort to kill all those NAMBLA freaks, but since it was the synaptic ghost of your dead great step grandma... or is it step great grandma? Anyway..."

Lily flipped the switch on the machine, sending volts of electricity into the electrodes attached to Snow White's body and ripping an agonized scream from her throat as her muscles contracted involuntarily.

"Niiiiiiiice," purred Lily after turning off the juice. "I was thinking I'd have to get creative with some pliers and a car battery, but then I stumbled on this little setup. Between this and the surveillance equipment tricked out pedophile ice cream truck in the warehouse next door, I don't think kids should be watching _this_ fairy tale."

Putting an army booted foot up on the table, Lily scrolled through the phone she was holding. "What ever happened to this Greg guy with the food porn obsession anyway?"

"Peter... Pan... killed... him," Snow gasped out.

"Of course, because Peter Pan would be real too," sighed Lily and she tossed the phone aside. "I gotta say, the catfishing texts to Emma's baby daddy pretending to be his girlfriend are amusing. Wish I'd met old Greggy and got to shake his hand."

"He... kidnapped... Henry... to give... to Pan... a child... abuser."

Lily shrugged. "Yeah, but I make exceptions for child abusers and assholes who hurt your family specifically, _because you all deserve to feel what I have_."

Voltage turned up, this time when Lily flipped the switch, Snow was left shaking.

In the corner a muffled sound drew Lily's attention and she smirked at the man who had a bloody nose and a blackening eye.

"Oh, you've joined the party again."

Lily used a grappling hook she'd found in the cannery to pull the gag from David's mouth.

" _You won't away with this_!" he shouted.

"Well, I've already gotten away with torturing your wife. Smells like she pissed herself," said Lily and glaring at the two she continued, "Do you know what that's like? Too be so terrified you piss yourself? Thanks you, _I do_. You took away my light potential, and maybe in _your_ world that would that would have made me a psychopath, but in this one where there's no magic it just meant I had a shit-ton of unearned bad karma. While your baby Emma was lamenting going through endless foster homes and group homes, crying because no one adopted her? I got adopted by an asshole who molested me and his wife who pretended it didn't happen. I had to run away and get an abortion when I was _fourteen_ , but Emma's pissed off that I ruined her happy bullshit month with The Waltons? I was only going with a deadbeat criminal because those were the only people who ever helped me _because of your spell!_ "

"I'm sorry!" Snow wailed.

Lily flipped the switch again, eliciting more screams from Snow.

"STOP!" David shouted.

"And what? Torture you instead?" scoffed Lily as Snow continued to trash against the bindings in pain. "Don't worry, soon as she passes out, you're up next. After all, who's more the fool? The fool or the fool who follows him?"

Another jolt, more voltage this time.

Lily loomed over Snow with a maniacal grin. "How does it feel, Snow White? How does it feel to have all your potential sucked out! How does it feel to have energy ripping through your body! Like that portal did mine when I was just a baby! I didn't come out in a fucking cushy tree either! I was in the hospital for weeks with broken bones! And they thought Ursula and Cruella had stolen me and abused me so the only people who knew me and cared about me had to run off and leave m-"

David had used the distraction to work on his cuffs with a paperclip, something Emma had taught him that she said, of course, she'd learned from Neal and used for stealing. He grabbed the grappling hook and swung it hard, though Lily caught site of the impending attack in her peripheral vision and weaved in time to avoid a blow to the head.

The impact to her shoulder sent her tumbling backward, but only momentarily phased. Lily was no shrinking violet. She was five eight with muscles and hit back like she'd been practicing for the UFC.

David had never been one to hit women, but when she kicked him in the balls and slammed a fist into his jaw before launching herself at the controls, turning up the voltage all the way, and letting it rip, he saw no alternative.

Blood poured from Lily's nose and split lip and was thrown back long enough for David to pull one of the clips off the battery - and luckily not get electrocuted himself.

Lily, who just wouldn't go down, tackled him.

"YOU RUINED MY LIFE!" Lily snarled.

"YOU TORTURED MY WIFE!" David shot back.

Suddenly, Lily vanished in a swirl of purple and Emma was standing there, looking grim and apologetic as David hurried to check on Snow who was unconscious but alive.

"I'm really getting tired of the hospital," sighed David before Emma whisked them there, and immediately amended, "and still not used to you being able to do that... and not really liking it without any warning."

"Sorry," Emma apologized as a medical team came over to whisk Snow away and she steered David to a bed in the ER to get fixed up.

"Not going to magically mend us both?"

"The way I see it," Emma replied, "the price of teleportation is getting a flat tire or running out of gas when you really need to get somewhere. But messing with injuries and illnesses... that can lead to prices that the wrong people end up cashing. Like Robin using magic to save his wife and unborn child from a fatal illness. Marian died and even when it wasn't Regina who did it, fate gave the task to someone else. Roland survived, but a life had to be taken in his place, the one that used magic to save it.

"Magic isn't grace. It's not divine. And no matter how often Rumplestiltskin tried to impart the kinds of prices, the rules, the loopholes that we had no business creating or taking advantage of and what it would lead to, I didn't listen. I was arrogant. I was blinded by pride and lust and the fear of not being in control of anything when we were constantly surrounded by terrifying chaos, but stuff that was never part of my life, that was _crazy_ and I just had to accept it and go along with it or the world would fall apart... only it did fall apart because of my complacency... and a shit ton of anti-anxiety and depression meds I was getting from Happy who got them from Leroy who stole them from the hospital during his night janitor rounds. I think I spent the better part of two years after getting back from New York in a self-medicated haze," Emma concluded, the first she'd openly admitted her prescription drug addiction. Half the reason she probably did such stupid shit like becoming the Dark One, turning Hook into the Dark One, and going to Hell was the pills she started popping, first to deal with having two sets of memories, then Neal died, then Ingrid showed up in her life again...

"Lily said we killed those people," David spoke up.

Emma grimaced. "Yeah, you did. Some kind of... residual memories and magic of Cora's. It wasn't either of your faults. Me, the bad stuff I've done, it was my magic, my decisions. You just... ended up Whale's guinea pigs. But... if it helps... most of them _were_ bad."

"Not Robin," sighed David. "He was a bit incompetent and not very thoughtful of other's needs or property and neglected Roland quite a bit, but... that seems to be a prominent theme amongst Enchanted Forest fathers... or mothers for that matter. Our world doesn't make very good parents does it?"

"No, which leads to a lot of kids who grow up to be either evil or addicts," Emma stated.

"And speaking of," interjected Archie who walked over with an ice pack against his head, "you both should come to a group meeting at the chapel. It's every Thursday night."

"What... like AA?" asked David, uncertain.

"We're a small town with only one curse certified psychiatric professional," returned Archie. "It's more like 'All Addictions Anonymous'... without the anonymous since we all know each other. But it's a chance for everyone to share their stories and find support."

"We'll think about it," Emma told the shrink and checked her phone. "I should get to the station and check on Lily. Looks like the resurrection went well and Maleficent's itching to meet her."

Emma gave her father's arm a squeeze. "Call me when Mom wakes up."

She vanished in a cloud of magic just as Whale was walking up and the doctor huffed, "No teleporting on the premises! There's a _sign_ , damn it!"

David glared at Whale. "You gave me the heart of a psychopath!"

"But you're alive."

"People are dead! _A good man is dead!_ "

"And you sentenced a baby to thirty years of misery and loneliness. Plus that Lily girl."

David sighed. It was a lot harder to argue the good side when everyone knew his dirty secrets. "Just tell me how my wife is doing."

* * *

AN: I bet they never cleaned that torture room up!

Next up: A conversation between two assholes.


	65. A Conversation Between Two Assholes

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY**

 **A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO ASSHOLES**

"I said I would make them pay."

"I said I would stop you," Emma directed at the brunet behind bars and offered a snack, "Half-eaten PopTart?"

"Emma," Neal cautioned and she rolled her eyes.

"What? I don't get to be bitchy to people who try to kill my parents?"

"You're the sheriff. Act like it."

" _Yeah_ , Emma," sniggered Lily.

Emma threw a glare at Neal. He was acting kind of bitchy himself all morning, making snide comments on their way to resurrect Maleficent. She had no idea what had changed since their roadtrip, which wasn't exactly _not_ awkward, but somewhat less tense after retrieving Lily. Surely the whole mess with her parents and Cora's internal organs causing mass murder couldn't have put him in _that_ a foul a mood?

"Why don't you go get her some food from Granny's then, _Neal_ ," Emma shot back, done with his attitude problem today.

"You'd better not spill anything in my car, _Neal_!" Lily called after him.

"Your car that you stole or someone stole and either way it's not yours," Emma told her bluntly. "And you're not getting out of here, never mind seeing your mother, until you promise to leave my parents alone."

"I want a lawyer!"

"Tough," Emma retorted, crossing her arms. "The only defense attorney in this town is Neal's father who's in a magical coma."

Lily glowered. "So, you're just gonna leave me locked up here, then? After being in prison, locked up on some trumped up charges while knocked up besides, you'd do that to someone?"

"You're not pregnant and I stole some watches. I didn't violate the Geneva Convention."

"Your skank-ass hoe mother deserved it."

"Hey, no one around here but me gets to call my mother a 'skank-ass hoe'," Emma snapped. "And she was sick. She had a medical condition that screwed up her judgment. And you think I'm defending them because we're rainbows and sunshine?"

Walking up the cell, Emma continued, "I have my own reasons to be angry with both of my parents. They made a dumb choice and because of that I ended up with a laundry list of abusive foster parents. I ended up living on the street. And having to give up my kid because a jerk who was sent through that wardrobe with me to _help me_ ditched me as a baby, called the cops on me, and stole all of Neal's money to finance a sex vacation to Thailand after spinning Neal a bullshit story to leave me is partly on them too. And that's me having twice the light magic potential. So the way I see it, being out of balance either way sucks flying monkey dick... and did I mention that I did that too? I lost my memories and I was conned by the Wizard of Oz who was a flying monkey into sleeping with him _for eight months_."

Lily played the world's smallest violin... and then followed up with a one finger salute.

"Don't care, bitch."

" _What is your problem!?"_ Emma snapped. "Is this all because I wouldn't help you and your skeezy boyfriend!? I was fourteen! I was happy-"

"You weren't happy! You were delusional! Which seems to be the norm for you the way all your 'friends' talk!"

"I am not delusional! I had some issues, but I am working on them!" cried Emma, balling her hands into fists and resisting the urge to pull a Regina and lash out magically.

"Yeah, like with your baby daddy who thinks you're a back-stabbing cunt. How's that working out for you? Not so well from the looks of it."

"Leave Neal out of this!"

"You brought him into it!" Lily scoffed, walking to the front of the cell to meet her. "You're such a fraud, Emma! You always were! You were a shitty thief when I met you and a shittier friend! Maybe being unbalanced is what makes you an asshole, but you _are_ an asshole. But, hey, you're also The Savior, right? So I'm stuck with bad karma so you can keep on coming out of every crisis you create with shit smelling like daisies."

"None of which was my choice! I came to find you as soon as I knew the truth, to try and fix things!" growled Emma. "Stop making the bad guy here!"

"Stop locking me up and offering me half-eaten breakfast food, bitch!"

"I'd have offered you bagels and a room at Granny's if you hadn't tried to kill my parents!"

"They ruined my life!"

"And they're really sorry about it!"

"Like I'm sure they're really sorry about the people they killed that you all didn't even want them to know happened!" Lily reminded. "You use magic as your excuse for everything, especially lying!"

"It wouldn't have helped anything," Emma told her angrily. "You don't know my parents."

"Do _you_?" countered Lily. "You just met them a few months ago and they were, apparently, brain damaged."

David walked in then, and Lily chirped, "Oh, look, it's the Tin Man. How's the ticker? Murder anyone on the way here?"

"David-" Emma warningly stepped in front of him, but her father brushed passed, his expression furious and growing furiouser.

" _You nearly killed my wife_ ," he sneered at Lily. "You want someone to blame for a bad life? I get that. But getting your happy ending with revenge? With torture and murder? I didn't want to believe Snow that your mother was such an evil and irredeemable person, but after what _you_ did it's pretty hard to believe we _didn't_ make the right choice."

Emma took him by the arm and dragged him away from the cell toward the hallway to the interrogation room.

"You are not helping," Emma hissed at him.

"And I am not standing idly by and letting one more person get away with this kind of crap, Emma."

"I get that," she conceded. "I want to stop dicking around and letting murderers off the hook on bullshit sob story technicalities too, but you have to think rationally here! Lily is not some megalomaniacal villain!"

"Are you trying to defend a woman who tortured your mother?"

"I'm trying to be impartial in a really difficult situation!" Emma hissed. "I'm trying not to screw this up again. Which means keeping you from going psycho on a woman whose sorceress mother was just brought back from an ashy existence and could burn this town to the ground! You're lucky Maleficent was feeling generous and didn't incinerate you and Mom on the-"

Suddenly, the ground shook and the cinderblock wall beside them exploded! This was followed by a deafening roar. But, of course, it wasn't Maleficent. In all of the craziness, Emma had somehow forgotten Lily's unexpected transformation that was now bringing the Sheriff's Station down around them.

As they ran out the emergency exit, Lily began shooting flames everywhere. Cars veered dangerously in the street to avoid them. Parked cars were instantly scorched and partially melted. Then Lily extended her wings and the rest of the Sheriff's Station collapsed.

She couldn't figure out how to fly and thus burn down the entire town. But she was bashing her wings on the adjacent buildings and piles of debris she was partially trapped by now which was just making her angrier from the pain and frustration.

There was a squeal of tires and Cruella's roadster rounded the corner and came to a halting stop where a light pole had been knocked into the street.

Maleficent jumped out of the passenger side.

"LILY! IT'S MOM! YOU STOP THIS RIGHT NOW BEFORE YOU HURT YOURSELF!"

It took a few more minutes of Maleficent's rather enviously good parenting skills to calm Lily down and regress her back into human form, after which the sorceress embraced her and the two went off to Granny's to talk.

"It's really not fair," sighed Emma, "that a murderous witch and a torturing bitch have the healthiest parent/child relationship around here... No offense, Dad."

"None taken," David replied with a grimace. "She really does seem to have a natural knack for it. I wonder if she'd consider baby-sitting Jerry?"

"Probably, but Lily would probably consider eating him."

"True. And with out luck..." David shook his head. "I'm going back to the hospital."

"Right," grumbled Emma as he left, "leave me clean up the mess. As usual."

The mess was an entire city block of broken water mains and smoldering cars... including the Bug which was also half smashed under cinderblock. Neal, clutching a soggy bag from Granny's got out of the Chevel and gave her a look.

" _Shut up_ ," Emma snapped.

"Now who's in a bad mood?" he snarked back.

Emma snatched the bag from him grumbling, "There had better be grilled cheese and onion rings in there."

* * *

AN: Lily and Maleficent are so cute together! Now someone just needs to beak the whitewashing spell! Why is Neal being bitchy with Emma? You'll have to wait a bit to find out.

Next up: Emma follows up on a previous case.


	66. Magical Hair Care For Dummies

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE**

 **MAGICAL HAIR CARE FOR DUMMIES  
**

Emma was not having a good day. Her former best friend almost murdered her parents and then destroyed the Sheriff's Station in a blaze of dragon fire.

Well, the destruction of the station didn't actually bother her, other than her keepsake box was now a pile of black charcoal, because dragon fire burned like rocket fuel, apparently.

Plus, _the Bug_.

Neal was pretty mad about _that_.

It seemed like, so far, her rather more literal attempt at a "rebirth" was going just as badly as her last one when she put away all her "childish things" and decided to live in the moment of assholery with her dick boyfriend, treating her family and friends like crap.

At least Maleficent had called Lily off, but now her parents were back in the hospital being treated for dragon burns that magic couldn't heal... and maybe they _kinda_ deserved it for the mass murder, maybe, but it was probably all still _her_ fault for sucking in her Savior role.

Which was why Emma found herself, somewhat reluctantly, entering the camp of the nameless Shaman who'd treated her family for pixie dust poisoning a week ago.

"Sheriff Swan," the bead-festooned man greeted her. "I hope you are feeling better, purged of that green poison."

"I don't know about better," Emma replied. "My life has been on a pretty shitty downward spiral since I got to this town. It's hard to tell."

"Then let me attempt to inquire of the Scalp Spirits. Perhaps they can discern why our life has been going so poorly."

"Maybe because I'm an asshole," Emma grumbled.

"Well, yes, there is that, but _why_ are you an asshole?"

"Genetics?" she snorted.

"You're still skeptical of the Scalp Spirits," said Not Chief.

"A bit, yeah."

"And yet you are here," he countered. "But I already know some, Sheriff Swan. I communed with the Spirits using that tangled mess in the sweaty scrunchie you left behind, and I can say that you have _very powerful_ hair, hair made of true love. Of course that love brought this unnatural, abhorrent magic to this world with which it is so incompatible, most-likely because the spell your parents cast on you before birth had an adverse effect on the nature of your follicular magic that clashed with the untainted true love of the potion that utilized your parents' hair before they became selfish pricks."

"Well, I won't deny the 'selfish prick' part," said Emma.

"And as such, as it was with your father and uncle who abused and corrupt their powerful follicular magic, it -"

"Came with a price?" Emma finished with a snort.

"Actually, I was going to say 'came back to bite you in the ass when used selfishly, as all white men and the majority of white women, particularly the stupid blonde ones, also do."

"Okay, that's totally racist and... hair color-ist! Just because I am blonde does not make me dumb!"

"Of course not," conceded Not Chief, "as you have not been a truly natural blonde since shortly after your son was born. Giving him away in your fake act of selflessness diminished your magic and so the luster of your once enviable honey blonde curls began to dull and go limp and with it the good magic that was naturally yours and not that dragon girl's began to fade. Of course, there was also the incessant use of a straight iron from the age of thirteen or so that combined with your dorky glasses you hoped would keep your pervert foster brothers from raping you damaged your hair irreversibly."

"My hair isn't dull or limp," Emma grumbled, feeling like she'd had this conversation before... and lost.

"It is in its natural state, which you have corrupted with your chemical products and curling iron and those very expensive natural hair _extensions_."

"I am not wearing-"

"OWE!" Emma shrieked as someone behind her yanked out her rather substantial hair extension.

"This cheap-ass weave?" Pocahontas gave her a smirking look.

"It was not cheap!" Emma huffed. "Give it back!"

"Don't think so, hair hoe!" the Native American (or Native Mistahven or something) princess smirked. "These dumb white folk might buy your luxurious locks, but we know pixie dust acerbates puberty, not hair growth. The Evil Queen may have the potions required to lengthen her hair on a whim - which, quite frankly, both diminishes _her_ power and looks ridiculous, because her facial shape really is better suited to short hair to convey authority and beauty. Now she just looks like one of those froo-froo dogs that got a blow-out at the groomer."

"Sheriff," Not Chief said, looking in dismay at the extension, "I will not be swayed by any of your threats."

"I didn't threaten you!" Emma exclaimed.

"After studying the sweaty glob of your actual hair, I see you are a woman of rather distasteful contradiction," he continued. "You came to this town, a woman who arrested your best and only friend for suspected murder because all of the evidence pointed to her being guilty, even though your yourself believed your friend is innocent. And yet, I saw you, in this other timeline you speak of, completely ignoring the pirate _literally_ admitting to attempted murder right in front you _and making a joke of it, no less_. Plus, there was the time you witnessed him commit cold-blooded murder just for fun and then covered it up for him by taking everyone's memories and breaking your son's heart which inspired him to become a pimp at age thirteen and get crabs from that Camelot harlot following some demented make-out competition between him and his aforementioned skank and you and your syphilitic fuckboy pirate kin."

"That... wasn't my best moment," muttered Emma.

"I remember hearing how you admitted to the fire you rescued Regina from being a hoax, because you didn't want to become sheriff through dishonest means," said Not Chief. "But the Scalp Spirits showed me that you soon became a devious and amoral person with only superficial regard for family and hair care. I saw what you did to your hair as the Dark One. While Zoso didn't have the best hygiene, even he did not flock his greasy mullet with cement dust and Vagisil."

" _I did not use_ -"

"Oh, please," scoffed Pocahontas, "you wore the same tight leather outfit and didn't bath for weeks. Even the Dark One does not have the power to fumigate a stinky vag."

" _I did not have BV and I did not put Vagisil in my hair_!" Emma screetched.

"Anyway," Not Chief continued, "I heard how you cut down Regina's prized tree, and absolutely refused to bow down to threats and bullying. And yet I saw you meekly accept all the vitriol and insults the pirate, your proclaimed true love, sent your way and didn't defend herself."

Not Chief clicked his tongue disdainfully and Emma grimaced.

"How you have fallen, Emma Swan! Everyone spoke of how you were about finding your family and that your one true love was your son above all else... and yet you could not live without a man you had been dating for three months, ignored your family, _abused your son_ in this murder cover-up."

The Shaman shook his head and told her, "The woman who came to this town was miserable and closed off, and lonely. But she was a bad ass, with integrity, honesty and kindness. Disconnected from your soul, controlled by lust and pride, you became a witless pod person. And _that_ is why your baby daddy is disinclined to knock boots with you."

Emma startled, then frowned. "How the hell do you know any of this!?"

"The Scalp Spirits know all. You have seen amazing and terrifying magical things and yet you cannot believe in this?" Pocahontas challenged. "Why? Because it doesn't require magic wands, potions, and fancy incantations? Stop being racist!"

" _I'm not being racist_!"

"No, just toward your hair," said Not Chief.

"That's not a thing!"

"It is a thing that you get chemical highlights to maintain that princessly honey blonde glow, which is the _real_ reason you did not want to disrobe and let out your big secret that the carpet does not match the curtains - and that sort of hair abuse and deception, along with this piece of trash," he pointed to the weave, "is just insulting to the Scalp Spirits!"

" _I just want to look pretty_!" Emma defended, fighting tears. "I spent my childhood trying not to look pretty so I wouldn't end up an orphaned pregnant loser-"

"And yet you ended up exactly that," Pocahontas snorted, "by trying not to be. That's sad. And kind of pathetic. And now you think trying to be pretty on the outside will mask how ugly you are on the inside. You think Lasik surgery, shiny blonde curls, and dressing up like Sandra Dee will make you into some wholesome doe-eyed girl-next-door. But, lady, you're still just that emotionally immature freak in a prison cell who cries herself to sleep at night because nobody loves her."

"That will be fifty-nine ninety-five," Not Chief concluded, holding out a hand.

"Are you kidding me!?" Emma exclaimed, puffy-eyed and sniffling. "You two insult me, _you made crude comments about my vagina_ , and you expect me to pay you!?"

" _I_ did not insult your vagina, only your pubic hair," Not Chief huffed. "But that was a juxtaposition to impress my insult of your other hair. That region of hair magic is not my clan's practice."

Emma stared at the crazy shaman in disbelief. "There's a form of indigenous magic based on _pubic hair_?"

"Of course. It is very powerful," Pocahontas interjected. "Also, it is a mark of affection _and possession_ for a woman to adorn her lover's buttons with her most powerful magic talisman. A man's greatest hair power may be on his head, but a woman's is between her thighs. I feel sorry for those fools who wax themselves bald down there. They are dooming themselves to misfortune in love as well as stupid children."

"Fifty-nine ninety five," Not Chief repeated. "I provided a service. And my niece has given you valuable advice to keep from repeating past future reproductive mistakes. Or are you intending to reprise your corrupt law enforcement ways from the other life you lived?"

Grumbling, Emma pulled money from her wallet and handed it over.

"A pleasure doing business with you, Sheriff Swan," said Not Chief, amending, "Also, you should really consider therapy. Seriously, the Scalp Spirits say you are one emotionally damaged ex of a motherfucker."

The Shaman let out a little laugh at his concluding pun, to which Emma just walked away, clearly building up to a sobbing fit, leaving Not Chief back to checking his blog on his phone.

"Sometimes I think white women are even dumber and weepier than white _men_ ," Pocahontas snorted. "And they don't all have concussions and syphilis and shaved pussies to blame it on."

"No, just the princesses with the required non-royal rake ancestor inserted into the family tree by the Dark One to facilitate a hazy and uncertain future genetic landscape which provided him with the means to cast his Dark Curse," said Not Chief, amending, "You returned her diary? You didn't trust the fairy with it did you?"

"Of course not. She's good for stealing, but I wouldn't trust her to actually return property," the raven-haired princess responded. "Granny needed a new maid, anyway, seeing as once Cinderella realized she'd married into royalty, she turned back into a stuck-up bon-bon eating bimbo. Of course, the girl has the IQ of meat because her mother was balder than a baby seal. Honestly, with what a buffoon her husband is, I worry their little magic-mushroom growth-retarded and gender-swapped baby will die of some unfortunate dumb accident before she-he can grow up to be a transvestite night janitor."

"No doubt that brat is permanently brain damaged," agreed Not Chief. "Perhaps it will marry Philip and Aurora's former monkey baby child."

"That'd be something to see," snorted Pocahontas, tossing Emma's weave into the campfire. "So... who's next on the client list?"

"Archebald Hopper."

"You're poaching the doctor you're poaching clients from?"

Not Chief looked insulted. "There are more than enough crazies in this town for both of us... enough that he needs to come to me to cleanse his mind, body, and soul of all the filth his patients are putting into him. Well, that and I suspect he feels guilty about the whole thing with killing Geppetto's parents and enabling him to create Pinocchio, causing him to betray Snow White and Prince Charming which lead to Emma growing up alone and being separated from her true love whom she let die while endangering her family to save his scummy stepfather for which he now is disgusted by the mere thought of sexual relations with her. Plus, there's the receding hairline. I don't think the Rogain Dr. Whale gave him has been working."

"Well, with stress like that, how could it?"

Just then Archie arrived, looking desperate. "You have to help me! I can't take dealing with these assholes anymore! My hair is falling out in clumps!"

It literally was. He held out an auburn clump of curly fuzz and burst into tears.

Pocahontas patted him on the back. "There there, you poor asexual white man, we will make you better."

"Though no promises on curing the asexual thing," said Not Chief. "You got cursed by the Blue Fairy with that one, and she's one crazy cunt with magic you don't want to mess with."

Sniffling, Archie wondered, "But then how come whenever we need her help in some magical mishap her magic isn't strong enough to really do anything?"

"Why did she send a boy down a magic bean hole to a world pillaged by a child abuser who mysteriously found a prophesy made by an _unknown_ clairvoyant person and then get a ship of fools sent to Neverland so that she would die and be reborn in the process of an unfortunate exile who was set up to fail using a darkly enchanted wand to destroy the creation of an ancient nemesis of hers?" Not Chief countered. "I wouldn't be surprised if she was even pulling that closeted gay wizard's strings and was in cahoots with whichever one of Satan's minions tricked Merlin into drinking from that cursed goblet and bringing dark magic and evil into our anthology."

"Anthology?"

"Oh, yes, we're not real," said Not Chief.

"Not real?" repeated Archie, confused.

"We're just characters in a badly written story," explained Not Chief, "that were brought to life through the accidental thought of an omniscient deity who lost interest in our intentionally stereotypical existence despite Satan's meddling to make our lives suck even further, because all of the magical worlds written out of time, our free will, even our souls are made up and don't matter."

"You sound like Tinkerbell," sniffed Archie.

"After all those years in Neverland, that fairy was bound to end up with a few screws lose enough to see beyond the veil of lies we live in."

* * *

AN: I took the 'only crazy people' thing from _Buffy_ ; only people in an insane asylum could see that Dawn wasn't real. Tinkerbell has an inkling of what's going on, which is how Ruby got the theory she proposed to The Charmings.

Next up: Emma and Grandpa Hook have a chat. Cruella has a cameo.


	67. Kin-Dread Spirits

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO**

 **KIN-DREAD SPIRITS**

" _What happened to your luxurious hair_?"

Emma was waiting for her parents to get out of the burn unit when, of course, Hook shattered her already sour mood and she pulled her beanie down further and glared at the pirate.

"What happened to yours?" Emma snarked back.

"Not cool, Swan," Hook huffed as he signed out and retrieved his hook. "Seriously, though, it looks like you got it caught in that shredder thing at the Station."

Glaring, Emma admitted, "I wear extensions, okay." At his bewildered look, she explained, "Fake hair... well... real hair but not my real hair. It was originally for work, so I could con bail jumpers by looking sexy with a lot of golden blonde hair, but then I came here and I had to compete with Regina and live up to Henry's Savior princess ideal, so I wear extensions and I color my roots and do highlights in the Sheriff's Station bathroom at night - or I did until Lily burned it down - and you have no idea how hard it was to maintain that while shitting in the woods for a month after falling through that hat, and, so yeah, my big secret is that I sometimes wear these stupid hats for weeks at a time because the Night Supply Train doesn't bring my Miss Clairol. Happy?"

"Not especially," replied Hook, to Emma's annoyance taking a seat beside her with box of too many rings and necklaces for a man who was not a gangster rapper. "Wouldn't really wish my hereditary hair issues on anyone. Should have wondered, perhaps, when I first saw your mother after Pan's Curse. It looked like she had a raccoon's nest on her head. It's a wonder Regina didn't curse her with that hair instead of lopping it all off. I'd get a good laugh every day if I passed _that_ on the street."

"Maybe Regina figured it wouldn't be mayoral to be seen in hysterical tears every morning when she went to get coffee," mused Emma.

"Hmm, could be. I was worried David couldn't give me a horse and supplies fast enough. I barely made it to the treeline before doubling over in laughter... which probably would have diminished my chances of them approving of my courting you in the event the Curse was reversed."

Rolling her eyes, Emma reported, "Honestly, if repeated attempted murder just endeared you to them more, laughing at my mother's ugly wig-like hair would have probably gotten you invited to dinner. Your syphilis really fucked them up mentally."

"Not my fault. I got it from Baelfire's mum... and... or possibly my own mum," Hook lamented.

"Yeah, you have a really disgustingly fucked up story, Hook. I'd feel bad for you if that hadn't resulted in my own list of misfortunes, _including_ my hair, which in its true form got made fun of by pretty much everyone I met in Purgatory, so thanks for that."

"Hey, now that really is my mum's fault," Hook argued. "She was the one with magical hair she used to con sex-addicted sailors out of money instead of for good like making amazing wigs for poor people with bad hair, and thus cursed all of her descendants with follicular problems. Plus the whole sleeping with her own son and suicide thing that got her hair turned into a sailor-murdering net. Or, at least, that's what The Shaman said when he came to see me the other day."

"Your brother was a real asshole, Hook," Emma told him and plucked a ring from his box of personal effects. "I can't believe I wore that ring you said was his and kept wearing it after I found out he mass murdered your entire merchant ship crew for a back door into the Navy."

Hook blinked at her. "Wait... he _what_?"

Emma winced. "Oh, right, you don't know. Yeah, Liam made a deal with Hades and sunk your ship so he could get that stupid storm gem to give to the King to get his own ship. I'm pretty sure he even made fun of your drinking problem. Then in The Underworld he basically called me a skank who wasn't good enough for you, and skank I might have been, but since I never raped anyone and only killed one person in self defense, that's pretty low, but it was again all in some deal with Hades that in exchange he'd get you as his adoring little bro again. Then he fell off a cliff and somehow letting himself die was enough to free all the people he murdered... not that I'd think they would want to sail off to Heaven with the guy who murdered them and wasn't even sorry about it for like three hundred years. Of course, that was some weird Sea Heaven from a book, not real Heaven, and for all I know they were all deadbeat rapists before he killed them, so... But he did call you more of a hero than he ever was... though... considering the mass murder thing, the greed, the lying to you about it, plus all this other rapey incest shit with your mom... actually accurate in retrospect."

Hook's expression shattered. "It just keeps getting worse!"

"Yeah, it kinda does."

"Liam said mum had left her ring when she died and he wore it as a reminder of her," sighed Hook, "but the little shite probably stole it from her jewelry box and kept it as a reminder to get revenge on her by hurting me too, because he thought mum always loved me more since she didn't protect Liam from our papa when he got drunk. And he murdered all those men who got me laid too! What's wrong with my family, Swan?"

"Well, everything. But you were just a little kid, Hook. Your brother had to be one hell of a psychopath to blame you for your mom managing to keep your father from beating you. Plus, the mass murder to get a ship thing."

Hook shrugged and considered, "I'm not sure Liam ever even saw it that way. He was clearly obsessed with revenge against our mother and my whole life I was really never more than an errand boy to him. I used to think he was helping pay both of our ways out of indentured servitude because he loved me and felt bad that I'd inherited our father's drinking problem. But now I see that it was only because I would be indebted to him, indentured into servitude by my fraternal gratitude, and he could manipulate me as he saw fit while I idolized him for heroism and good form that was all lies. I joined the Navy because he saved my life and found that jewel, because that's what he wanted me to be and I owed him. All he wanted was me in a position to do his bidding. The only time I ever spoke out against him was when I objected to our king's operation. He died and he was still messing with me after death? What kind of brother does that?"

"A crappy one?"

"Clearly."

Hook asked after a moment, "Did he at least acknowledge my awesome badass pirating?"

"Didn't even mention it."

" _Damn it_. I did that for him too! Stupid jerk can rot in The Underworld then!" Hook pouted, crossing his arms.

"To be fair," Emma pointed out, "all of your most evil deeds and even your revenge against Rumplestiltskin was always piggie-backed on some more intelligent and cunning villain who made false promises and bullied you the way he did."

"Noooo!" Hook moaned. "All of my schemes have been a buggered attempt to recapture my dysfunctional relationship with my brother! For three hundred years that pillock has kept me from being my own evil genius!"

"Um... right."

"He can definitely rot in The Underworld!" Hook exclaimed, then burst into tears, "Why does no one love me!?"

"I thought Milah loved you," Emma said, then reconsidered, "No, wait, actually she didn't even ask to see you in The Underworld. Other than throwing shade at me for sleeping with you and her son, she really didn't care. Seemed like you were just her ticket out of a loveless marriage. Sorry about that."

"Three hundred years I wasted revenge on a woman who was just using me!?" Hook wailed. "I'm such a loser!"

"You kind of are," Emma agreed. "But... so am I, I guess."

"So... we can be losers together?" Hook asked her, hopeful.

"Um... no, I'm still kind of disgusted by you on account of the whole marrying you and having sex with you in another timeline thing."

"Right. That."

Hook sighed and considered, "Milah always was rather cold. Oh, she made up for it in physical passion, but emotionally she was... well... like my mum, I guess. Papa was less inclined to punch her in the face if she was holding me as I'd cry and the neighbors would hear."

"That's messed up, Hook."

"It really is."

"Speaking of face punching. Belle? Seriously, you have to apologize for that."

"I let her punch me in the face _several times_ when we were bewitched."

"You didn't _let_ her, Hook, you were weakened from being tased in the balls and couldn't fight back and begging 'please stop before you make me as ugly as your husband' is not an apology."

"Fine, whatever!" Hook huffed. "At least some women are not driven off by bald men, but I don't know any man that would want a bald woman, not even that bleeding heart Nealfire with his Emma-sized torch."

Emma glared. "I am not going bald, Hook. And why do you always have to resort to juvenile insults?"

"I don't know, maybe because I was traumatized by my psychotic brother who made me shag my own mum!" Hook huffed. "And I've heard excessive dying and perming can lead to hair loss. How long have you been abusing your roots, Swan?"

"Just _shut up_."

"Fine."

"And Neal is not carrying a torch for me. Every time I bring up the possibility of us, he shoots me down. After the Shaman thing he made it blatantly clear that he could only ever see me as a friend because I hurt him too badly with all of the stuff I did for you that I wouldn't do for him and lying that I would have when I was visited by what I believed was his spirit," Emma explained. "I think maybe he could have forgiven the rest if I'd been honest then, but I felt so guilty and how do you tell someone who died to help you that not only did they die in vane because Zelena was still alive and hurting our family, but that you actively shot down an opportunity to get them back because you didn't want the complication of a relationship that was long and deep and painful with someone who called your bullshit that you were afraid would see what a failure you were and leave you again when you could be with someone who was all bullshit and would never leave because of a stalkerish obsession if you could just bring them back from the dead by binding them to you for life with your heart?"

Hook gave her a disturbed look.

"That's... very creepy and selfish, Swan. You turned me into the Dark One and then gave me half your heart because you wanted me as your back-up plan so you wouldn't have to watch Netflix and chill alone with your vibrator? Not because you truly loved me?" Hook exclaimed. "I guess I really do fall for selfish bitches like my mum!"

"Hey!"

"Well, you're not making yourself look heroic! I was nothing but your fuckboy!"

"You spent three centuries date raping women, Hook! I fail to see how being tied to a woman who gave you regular sex that you thought loved you, that you were freakishly obsessed with, is a bad thing!"

"It's dishonest!"

"Yeah, well, that's how our family rolls! Deal with it!"

"And you call me juvenile?" Hook huffed.

Emma frowned and admitted, "I've never been good with talking about feelings, okay? And I was never good at listening either. I should have known when Neal didn't call my bullshit, when he didn't lay into me for asking him to help me split my heart for you, when he said he didn't have unfinished business after never getting to say good-bye to Henry, that it wasn't him. And that's where I lost him," she sniffed. "I looked into the eyes of an impostor and I didn't know it wasn't the man I love. And I can't say it was a soul thing, because I was in Purgatory then - the real place - so that was _all of me_ in that moment, wasn't it?"

Hook shrugged while screwing his hook into his gauntlet as if her emotional unburdening was utterly boring to him now that he wasn't trying to shag her.

"Well?" Emma demanded and Hook rolled his eyes.

"I'm not clear on the particulars of how that works, Swan. But from what Neal said of it, you got tricked by the Devil. Whatever connection all that had to Hades, it'd have to have been Satan himself to get to that place, to impersonate someone you loved so well. And from what all those fairy nuns blather on about around here, Satan has tricked some pretty devout and intelligent prophets. It's sort of his thing with saviors, isn't it? The game he plays with The Almighty - if you believe in all that rubbish."

"Maybe, but I'm not sure Neal sees it that way," Emma replied, then asked, "You don't believe in God?"

"We never discussed it in that other timeline?"

"In a vague roundabout way. More about the 'happy places' that we sent people in The Underworld to and then not much. I didn't want to think about it, about Neal being there and not being able to see Henry grow up. He'd said when he died that he'd be looking down on us from somewhere, but then when I saw him - fake him - he didn't know... all he knew about was you in The Underworld, which should have been another clue that it wasn't really him, but I thought it was him and he was happy without us and that hurt, but I was also relieved that he couldn't see us, because I knew he wouldn't approve of me taking Henry to find you, and that it hurt him what I was willing to do for you, that I wouldn't listen to his warning. I saw that flicker of sadness, of rejection, just like when he died and he knew I wasn't going to try true love's kiss to save him, and I thought it was him... but I guess it was really the Devil disappointed that I wasn't going to stay away, save souls that he could torment."

Emma wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I really screwed up. I got played so bad. And now I don't know what happens if I actually manage to fix everyone here and really save their souls."

"Who said we're in need of salvation, Swan?" asked Hook. "Maybe some therapy..."

"Yeah, definitely therapy," she ruefully agreed.

"All right, Mr. Jones!" the nurse at the desk called out, "you're free to go."

"Thank you, milady!" Hook beamed flirtatiously as he stood.

The nurse snorted. "I was a siren in our world, pirate. Your magical hair sex powers don't work on me. You're lucky you never sailed into my corner of the ocean or I would have 'arse raped' you with a narwhal's tooth."

Hook glowered at her, then told Emma, "You should try talking to Nealfire, Swan. Everyone makes mistakes in love. I've clearly made several. He was engaged to that harlot who shot him-"

"And he could have been engaged to me if I'd believed in our love, but I didn't."

"Aye, well, faith has never been my strong suit. I suppose your mum got it from her father and it skipped a generation."

"Seems like it," snorted Emma.

The nurse gave Hook a glaring look.

"All right, all right, I'm going, you harpie!"

Hook backed out the door and Emma slumped in her chair. Her life had seemed like it was going so great before she died, and now she'd been hit with a reversal of fortune. It was Portland and Phoenix all over again... though this time she was even more to blame for her misfortune. Selling out a soul was obviously worse than possessing some stolen watches.

If only she'd never made that suggestion. If only they'd just gone to Canada.

If only...

But there was no point in dwelling on it. _This_ was her do-over, and it wasn't about her. She had to stop dwelling on her own deserved unhappiness and focus on getting everyone else to fess up to theirs. Cora was a crazy bitch, but she had gotten that right. It was time to stop bitching and wining about the fucked up stories of the past, take some accountability, and see where the truth got them... which was hopefully free of making the same selfish and cliche mistakes over and over like Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff every time.

And speaking of...

"What happened to your hair, darling?" Cruella asked as she sauntered into the waiting room, "Did you get cursed?"

"What happened to y... oh... right... cursed," Emma said, wincing.

"I'm looking for your pirate on Ursula's behalf. Have you seen him, darling?"

"You just missed him. He's probably taking a cowardly walk through the woods," Emma snorted. "You should be able to head him off at the old bridge. Just follow the sign by Gold's shop."

"Marvelous!"

"Hey," Emma spoke up as the skunk-haired woman was about to leave, "I'm sorry."

Cruella raised a brow. "For what, darling?"

Emma sighed. What _was_ she sorry for? She hadn't killed this Cruella and the other one had deserved it, even if she did feel regret once she stopped pretending that she'd reacted the only way she could have. It was a wonder Cruella hadn't attacked her in Purgatory... but then she _had_ been a complete psychopath which kind of negated the lessons there. Emma's brain hurt still trying to piece together all of the facets of the Afterlife, what was real and what was some made-up limbo, some fly paper for dead fairy tale souls that kept them from nonexistence.

"Just dragging you back into this," Emma said at last. "Your world didn't have magic either. At least, not in the way the Enchanted Forest does. It was probably a relief to come to this world after Isaac trapped you there."

"I wouldn't call it that, darling," said Cruella. "Every world has different bars. And I don't mean the ones serving gin."

Before Emma could come up with a response to that, Cruella concluded, "Well, I'd best be going. I shall endeavor not to hit the pirate too hard, but only out of courtesy to the hospital staff."

Letting out a sigh, Emma threw Liam's ring in Leroy's passing janitor cart trash. It was as good a place for it as any.

* * *

AN: Yes, Hook and Emma actually had a REAL talk, unlike the bullshit ones on the show. As blood relations they have some messed up stuff in common they should work through, plus a lot of self-loathing and confusion over being used as pawns by people they thought loved them.

Next up: Hotrod meets pirate.


	68. Operation Crossroads

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE**

 **OPERATION CROSSROADS**

One moment Hook was making his way through the woods, taking the shortcut he had often utilized to spy for Cora or watch Emma take lunch breaks on patrol which occasionally meant her peeing behind some bushes after too much coffee or one of those giant cups of pop from the Dark Star - and, yes, even at the time he had realized that it was rather perverted to spy on Emma dropping her tight-ass jeans and panties to relieve herself - though at least he wasn't perverted enough to be into the second part of that!

Anyway, back to the point. One moment Hook was taking his spy-slash-stalker shortcut and the next he was being mowed down by a prematurely graying psycho in one of this world's four wheeled death traps, all of which seemed to have it out for him.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, darling," cooed Cruella as she helped him out of the ditch he'd landed in, "these old roads are so slippery this time of year. Let me take you back to the hospital!"

Only she didn't, of course. As he was getting into the car she jabbed him with a needle and the next thing Hook awoke being hauled out of her death trap by Cruella and a very angry coconspirator.

"Ursula," Hook croaked out. "Fancy seeing you h-"

She kicked him in the groin and Hook crumbled to his knees. "Oye, not fair!"

"Neither was what you did to me, Pirate Scum!" hissed Ursula. "Now summon my father!"

"He's _your_ father."

"That I couldn't summon even if he hadn't exiled me because you took my inter-dimensional mer-magic, Pirate Scum!"

Cruella smirked and shoved a conch shell at him, telling Hook, "Baelfire seems to think this should do the trick, even in this world. So pucker up and blow, me hearty."

Hook sneered at the pun, but snatched the shell and did as he was told. It wasn't long then before the sea boiled as it had in The Enchanted Forest and Poseidon appeared, in this instance taking on human form and stepping on the dock where Cruella's car was parked.

"Ah, Pirate Scum, have you fulfilled your end of our bargain?"

Hook let out a sigh and held out his box of personnel effects which included Ursula's shell. She snatched it out, gave him a sour look, and then bitch-slapped her father.

"That's for abandoning me because of something a piece of human filth did!" Ursula growled.

"But, my little sea cucu-"

"Don't you 'little sea cucumber me', Daddy!" snapped Ursula. "I was a young girl. You sent me away to bring pirates to their doom and when I got scammed by one you took _his_ side."

"Well, that's not entirely-"

"It is entirely that you were looking for any excuse to get me out of the line of succession while saving the family a scandal, and apparently being voice-rapped by a pirate-"

"Oye, there was nor raping!" Hook exclaimed. "I might have had a few a questionably consensual shags, but they were all adults _and human_!"

"Including your mother," scoffed Cruella.

"Do you want me to cut you?" Hook threatened with his hook.

In response, Cruella spewed out her animal-controlling stink breath and a flock of sea gulls descended, not to peck Hook to death, but to all relieve themselves at the same time.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"What? You lived at sea, darling, surely you've been shit on by more than a few birds," the woman cackled.

"It's a good look for you," sniggered Ursula.

"Indeed. We can at least agree on that," nodded Poseidon. "And I am sorry, Star Fish. You have to understand that I was beholding to that crazy religious cult in Atlantis that had brainwashed so many of our people. I would have been forced to testify to your activities and they could have thrown us both in a tench and taken over. Drowning pirates with our magical hair nets is one thing, but those people are _crazy_."

"Sounds like the nutters at Zelena's old farm," mused Hook.

"So... you don't think I'm a vile and disgusting disappointment?" asked Ursula.

"Of course not, Star Fish. But you can certainly do better than that ginger idiot with coral for brains. I'm quite sure she thinks a human vagina is just a place to stash stolen spoons. And her prince is rather dimwitted too."

"Yes, they're in for a real _Blue Lagoon_ moment on their little island, I'm sure," drawled Cruella and she shuddered. "God help your people from what they spawn."

"How do you know about Eric and Ariel?" asked Hook, unnerved and the bling-wearing woman rolled her eyes.

"Oh, Emma was yammering on about your various lies while drinking with Regina to make her feel better after her ex-lover's demise. It was _so_ gay."

"We really should be going," Poseidon interjected.

Ursula laid a hand on his arm. "I need a moment with Cruella, Daddy," she told him, then turned to the other Queen of Darkness.

"You're sure you don't want to come back with me?"

"To what?" sighed Cruella. "That's not my world, darling..."

Ursula dragged Cruella out of ear shot then and it was just Hook and Poseidon standing awkwardly.

"So..." said Hook, still covered in sea gull poop.

Poseidon crossed his arms and remarked, "So, you know about your whore mother."

"What do _you_ know about it?" huffed Hook.

"I know her hair net has drown many a pirate. And that it would have drown your sorry backside too if your brother hadn't gotten that jewel which warded it off," complained the Mer King. "You have been a menace to my family for generations, Pirate Scum. We never should have made this accursed net!"

That said, Poseidon threw at Hook a net made of glowing multi-colored hair.

"My family should have known better than to make this," sighed Poseidon. "They made a horrible deal."

"A deal? What deal?"

"Your whore mother," he explained, "came to my great great great great grandfather with a child she did not want. It seemed she had learned a terrible secret discovered by her sister whores and after it was confirmed by her eldest son who had just gotten his own ship in the Royal Navy for mass murdering his crew to get my people's most precious gem - a theft which led to the rise of that aforementioned cult of crazies - and in exchange for doing away with the child, she would give her magical hair to my family for the most powerful of sailor-snaring nets. An agreement was reached. My great great great great grandfather took her hair and the child and then, of course, she drown herself as she could not deal with the horrors to which she had been a part."

It was several long moments before Hook put together what Poseidon was trying to say, and then he paled as he stammered out, "Y-you're not saying that I... that... fa-fathered a child with m-my own m-um?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

Hook staggered back. "Oh, gods! And you... your ancestor killed-"

"Of course not," scoffed Poseidon. "We kill adult humans not babies. It wasn't the brat's fault it was born of an incestuous union as part of some psychopath's prank. Using the magical hair net she was taken through a portal to another land and given to a childless couple."

"You mean... I could have great great great great grandchildren running about along with the not as great ones I unintentionally fathered on account of shagging Queen Eva's mum?"

Poseidon sighed. "You humans _are_ thick, aren't you? What I'm trying to tell you, Pirate Scum, is that 'Queen Eva' is the child you fathered with your mother who was taken through a portal. Because of the use of the magical hair net at a King Tide during a magical hurricane that channeled the powers of our Heart of the Storm gem-"

"But I thought you said she found out after Liam stole the gem?"

"You think that stupid king kept that gem for long?" scoffed Poseidon. "We sent assassins at the King Tide to retrieve it. Of course, they failed to kill him on account of the dreamshade and died upon returning with the gem. There are statues made in their honor... or there were until those cultists smashed them."

"But we didn't bring dreamshade back from Neverland-"

"Of course you did. Your brother hide it from you. He was a lying, manipulative, jerk."

"I meant until several years later."

"Don't try your chronological bullshit on me, Pirate Scum. Have I not explained that our portal use is subject to temporal anomalies? You should be focusing on the disgusting fact that you fathered a child with your mother who was given to some second rate royals with a faked Dark One birth certificate because that was a preferable provenance to the truth. No one would want an incest baby born at a brothel and pawned off by some mermaids."

The truth finally did set in then and Hook fell to his knees, vomited into the sea, and then burst into tears, which was becoming a rather sad repeat occurrence. In his misery, he completely missed Poseidon and Ursula leaving and Cruella getting into her car and driving off.

When finally a pair of boots appeared in his vision it came with an insult, "You're looking a little thin on top and round about the middle, Captain."

Hook sniffled and glared upwards. "Fuck off, Smee."

"Aye aye, Douchebag!" Smee cheerfully declared, striding toward his repaired lobster boat and his crew.

"Let's go deadliest catch some crustaceans, bitches!" the former first mate exclaimed, earning cheers from the men who once served the fearsome Captain Hook.

Never having felt more rotten in his whole life - and he'd lived 300 plus years, though he'd been trying to round that down progressively lately to seem less creepy than The Crocodile - Hook picked himself and his mother's skanky net up and endured a centuries late walk of shame of incestuous proportions back to his ship.

At least _The Jolly Roger_ had never betrayed him. And it had rum in its hold. _Lots and lots of rum_.

* * *

AN: That's right, Eva is also Hook's half-sister! At least one of you readers saw that coming. Babies and portals on this show, am I right? And yes, the chronology of it makes no sense, but that's the point (obviously). And did something totally gay happen with Ursula and Cruella? Did they part on good terms or not? Meh, it's just a possible but really said out-loud token lesbian side story with off-screen resolution that's not important when Hook is man-paining, duh! As for the title of the chapter, "Operation Crossroads" was the project name of nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958 at seven test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air and underwater. The final test of the so-called "Baker Bomb" was declared by the Atomic Energy Commission "the world's first nuclear disaster" and due to a miscalculation of the yield of the isotopes used in the bomb was about 1,000 times more powerful than each of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

Next up: If you thought Hook was having a bad day, Emma's isn't going so well either. FYI: Never take advice from Pirate Scum!


	69. The Unchosen One

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR**

 **THE UNCHOSEN ONE**

"Why are you pissed at me?" Emma snapped after growing tired of Neal giving her the cold shoulder or stink eye or whatever seemed to suit his sour mood at any given moment since they're return from New York two days ago.

"I'm not pissed at you," Neal said without looking at her as he swept into a dustpan more of what used to be the Sheriff's Department.

Technically, there were other people that could clean up the burnt out husk of a building, but salvaging boxes stuffed with the half-charred remains of files for cursed people that were all bullshit was preferable to planning Robin Hood's funeral, something they'd left to Regina, Little John, and the creepy funeral director who may or may not have been a vampire from Dr. Whale's not-quite-as-magical world.

"Yes, you are!" huffed Emma while sweeping up a cloud of ash that made them both cough.

"All right, fine," Neal responded after he'd stopped wheezing. "You're not wearing the keychain."

Emma sputtered, having not expected that. "I... what?"

"The keychain. Did you even look for it? You said you lost it here during the fight with Regina."

Emma frowned at him. "When would I have had time, Neal? In case you haven't noticed, the place was burned to the ground by dragon fire shortly after we arrived!"

"Which wouldn't have destroyed something enchanted by true love. If you really wanted to find it, you could get some 'find it' potion shit from the pawn shop," Neal pointed out. "But maybe you're just waiting for me to kick it again so you can replace it with Hook's brother's creepy cock ring and go back to your bullshit plagiarism of your parents' epic romance."

"Are you serious!?" Emma squawked. "Why the hell would I want to relive that incestuous mess? I thought we were done with this!"

"Yeah, well, I guess we're not," Neal countered with a sigh, setting his broom down. "Look, here's the thing. You say that, but you've said a lot of bullshit over the years, Emma. You think other people who've been accused of banging their blood relatives don't say it's nasty while not giving a damn that they're related? And it's not just that. I mean, hell, even that crazy bitch on _Game of Thrones_ genuinely cared about her kids over banging her brother, even if she went about protecting them in a shitty way. You couldn't even do that for Henry."

Emma smacked him on impulse.

Neal gave her a bemused look. "Funny how whenever Hook called you names you stuck your tongue down his throat. Me? I always get the bitch slap and 'I wish you were dead' treatment."

"That's not fair!" Emma snapped, hurt by the accusation, "I know I was a hypocrite, okay? But you say you want me to get back to my true self. Well, that woman bitch slaps guys who insult her. You can't have it both ways when you want me to change, Neal."

"But have you?" Neal countered. "You keep saying you want a second chance for us, but your actions don't add up."

"Well, I'm sorry that I'm not living up to your expectations!"

The crunching of glass under boots alerted them to the arrival of Snow and Charming who looked uncomfortably between them as Snow announced, "We just wanted to stop in and see if there was anything we could help with before the wake."

"Not really," said Emma stiffley.

Neal responded sourly, "Looking for another excuse to not spend time with your kid, huh?"

"Excuse me?" sputtered Charming.

"Ignore him. He's pissy for some reason," huffed Emma.

"Some reason? I got a lot of reasons to be more than pissy," Neal corrected and frowned at her parents. "Like you two with the whole mass murdering that no one'll ever know about cause your shit don't stink."

"It's better for everyone-" Snow began.

"It's better for _you_ ," Neal cut her off. "All you ever do is try to save face for your selfish mistakes that hurt people. Yet you're supposed to be these great heroes and examples of moral fortitude.. You're not. You suck as leaders. And you suck as parents. You say you want to be better people, better parents, but that's what you said after tossing Maleficent's kid down a portal, right? And not so much with the character growth," Neal accused. "It's just a bunch of sanctimonious bullshit with you two, even more selfish and shitty than all the times Belle has made absurd double standards for my father."

"Neal..." Emma cautioned, trying to lay a hand on his arm to stop him from infuriating her parents more, but he pulled away and kept ranting.

"Naw, it has to be said," he stated. "I sacrificed our happiness a decade ago," he turned back to her parents, "so Emma could find you guys, but what have you really done as parents to make that worth it? Tell Emma she wasn't good enough and replace her with another kid as soon you could, then inform her that, hey, you're the reason her life sucked in the first place because you couldn't stand the thought of her making bad choices and how that would reflect on you?

"And what about me?" Neal continued. " _I_ made that sacrifice, and what did I get? Told to fuck off when I asked for you help to be reunited with Emma and _my son_ while you bent over ass backwards to kiss the pointy boots of the guy who banging Henry's grandmother and made getting into Emma's pants his number one priority the moment I was presumed dead using alcohol, emotional blackmail, and stalking until some magical book bullshit made it all sound like an epic romance parallel of your own revamped story, so she gave in? What kind of heroes do that?

"What kind of 'good parents' applaud their daughter becoming an emotionally abused doormat so their grandson's sleep written fairy tale history book can recount their true love in pretty pictures and poetic lies? I mean, Christ, when Emma dragged you to Hell in that other timeline, you didn't give a shit for days that you abandoned your son and when you finally thought about him for a second, your solution was to fucking haunt him in his sleep through a phone booth, which is creepy as shit, but you all agreed it was some beautiful expression of perfect parenting because a creepy ass quill recounted it with the same poetic bullshit lines Hook uses to revisionist history his date raping into dashing conquests of seduction. You abandoned your kid. He's a rapist. You're both assholes. But that's what being a fairy tale hero is, right? Dumb fucks who rely on 'good intentions' rather than 'common sense'."

David looked ready to punch him, but Snow held him back as Charming seethed, "You have no right to judge us, _Baelfire_. You sent our daughter to prison. _Pregnant_."

Neal rolled his eyes. "No, August sent her to prison. And he stole all the money Emma could have used to raise Henry, but conveniently, no one ever seems to remember that. I guess because you just want another reason to hate me, another reason beyond the son-of-the-Dark-One thing to have grounds to push me out of this family so you can pair your daughter up with some fairy tale legend, whether that's a chauvinist cardboard prince or a slutty misogynist pirate, because anyone with literary pedigree is a better choice for her soulmate than some peasant nobody who didn't even get his own chapter in that book and doesn't have some epic magical love story, just stolen convenience store hot-dogs and dirty motel rooms, right?"

The Charmings had no immediate response to that, so Neal raged on, "Well, you know what? You can stop the worrying and sabotaging, cause there's a better chance of me resurrecting the Dark One again," Neal concluded with a cool look at Emma, "than giving my heart and soul to someone who clearly never appreciated either."

Emma gasped and sputtered, "This is all because of a keychain?"

"No, it's all because you never chose me, Emma," he answered, anger fizzling out to resigned disappointment.

"That's not-"

"Magic brought us together," Neal cut her off. "And it pulled us apart. You made the choices that sounded good, that you thought would make you happy or at least your life easier: working together instead of going it alone on the streets, getting out of that life we were living when the opportunity presented. Always what was easiest. But you never chose _me_. If you'd chosen me we would have just gone to Canada instead of getting the watches. If you'd chosen me you'd have tried to save me so I could see my son grow up, even if you didn't want anything to do with me again. If you had - I could have forgiven you for sleeping with Hook after knowing he was my deadbeat stepfather, even marrying him and having his kid, as disgusting as that is. You didn't though. You _didn't_ choose me. So, I _can't_ choose you, Emma, no matter how much I do love you. I'm sorry and it's not my intention to your hurt, but self-respect is pretty much the only thing I have, and considering that's a rare commodity in this town... between us and me, I gotta choose me. Because I'm the only one who ever does."

He turned then and strode out into the street, unnecessarily opening and slamming the melted front door that shattered. The flash of sunlight against the dreary, charred surroundings reminded Emma of her 'vision' on the way to The Underworld that wasn't even really Neal, just a trick.

She wished that she'd wake up and find it was all dream. But she didn't, and when she got to the sidewalk he was driving off in the Chevel.

"Emma..." Snow began, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Emma shrugged her off as Neal had done and sniffed back tears. "Don't."

"He had no right to say those things," David argued.

"He had every right," Emma countered, "and you know it - at least the part you were involved in. You _did_ treat him like trailer trash after Pan's Curse. It _was_ selfish and horrible of you not to help him find Henry. Naming my brother after him was _so_ many kinds of wrong that not only hurt him, but hurt me and Henry, a constant reminder of how we both failed that was made even worse, because you _were_ bad parents who neglected him so badly if this was the real world Social Services would have taken him away. And, yeah, I was just as bad, but that doesn't make what you did okay. And half the reason I turned out so fucking messed up is you abandoning me and then barging back into my life with your bipolar parenting!

"I wanted a friend, I thought I had one," Emma accused Snow, "but then you turned into a condescending bitch who put me down at every turn to lecture me with your 'wisdom' about how life works only to then support me in all kinds of self-destructive choices out of what I assume is guilt for that spell with a side of indoctrinating me into this fake feminist bullshit you all think is being a strong woman. But punching people in the face on a journey that's all about making babies with some hot stranger is just being an asshole and an idiot! So is it any wonder I ended up with Hook?

"I lost my friend _and_ gained a bossy know-it-all snob for a mother on the same day," Emma continued. "I never got to know my father, because he went from some guy having an affair with my friend to some guy broing around with my lover, more concerned with looking cool in comparison and having a cohort to punch people he didn't like than protecting me and my son from utterly fucking up our lives. We could have been happy, there were moments when we could have made the choices that led to that, but you either weren't there or you worked against our happiness because it conflicted with yours. And now... now it's too late to fix. I'm still The Savior, but this time I don't get to save myself, I don't get to have a happy ending, because you both failed to fight for me... so I didn't fight for Neal."

Despondent, Emma walked away, and her parents didn't follow. Snow was fighting tears and David just looked devested.

"So," he said after a minute or so, "that was the long version of the talk you got in the hospital."

"And then some," sighed Snow and she shook her head. "We have to do something, David. We have to fix this."

"No, we don't."

"David-"

"The last time you said that, Snow, I tried to convince Emma to have coffee with Neal, and you know how that ended - with us telling him to 'fuck off'. The last thing either of them wants is us trying to fix our mistakes - and if Regina were here, she'd probably say the only thing worse than us coming up with a plan is us coming up with a plan to fix our plan that blew up in our faces. Face it, it'll just snowball into another magical catastrophe. We're complicit in our daughter losing her happily ever after in order to save our own, and there's nothing worse than parents putting their own safety and happiness before their kids. She's right, Snow. We broke the cardinal rule of parenting. We failed our daughter. And there's no coming back from that."

"Neal forgave his father," Snow pointed out, desperate.

"But he obviously doesn't trust him. He's addicted to power," Charming argued. "And we're... addicted to looking like heroes, even though it seems we're just as fucked up as the rest of them."

"We used to be heroes," sighed Snow. "We used to make the right choices. It all goes back to that spell, doesn't it? I ruined everything. If I'd never done that, Emma wouldn't be the Savior. Rumplestiltskin wouldn't have had his loophole to cast the Dark Curse-"

"And then Emma and Neal might never have met," David pointed out, sighing. "It's a paradox."

"Emma loves him so much. And he loves her too.. He would be so hurt if he didn't," Snow lamented. "We should have tried harder to get Emma to talk to him before all of this. Now they both think we're against them. I don't care who Emma's true love is, Charming, what his station or pedigree is. I just want her to be happy, and if that's with Neal-"

"But we don't know that it is. That's the mistake we made with Hook, isn't it? After Neal died, we agreed that if the flirting went somewhere, if that's what Emma wanted, but what she wanted wasn't what she needed."

"We are terrible judges of character," sighed Snow. "Regina was right about that. And we haven't been good parents either. How can we be so bad at this?" she lamented.

"Well, my father was an alcoholic and you're related to Hook..."

Snow grimaced. "I'm still not ready to deal with that."

"Yeah, me neither. All I can say is, with that haircut... it's a good thing you didn't get your mother's eyes or a leather fetish..."

That earned a glare and Snow picked up the dustpan Neal had left on a half-burnt desk and tossed the contents in her husband's face.

David sputtered and coughed and wined as he jogged after her into the street, "Oh, come on, Snow!"

"I do not have Hook's hair!"

"Look, there's no shame in that weave you wore back in the Ench-"

0" _It was not a weave_!" snapped Snow, taking the keys out of his jacket pocket. "Now get in the truck. We have to pick up a funnel cake to take to the wake of my step mother's lover whose wife she murdered for supporting me as the rightful ruler of a kingdom that is now a pile of ruins."

As Snow got into the driver's seat, David mused unhappily with a skyward glance, "Guess it hasn't been a great week for true love, has it?"

* * *

AN: Snowing really are dumb fucks. Props to **NatalieTudorYork** for the tweet "Just adding Belle to the list of dumb fucks that we call "heroes" on this show who rely on "good intentions" rather than common sense". That really is how heroism works on this show. *sigh*

Next up: Emma gets advice from someone other than Hook.


	70. Puppy Love

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE**

 **PUPPY LOVE**

Emma had hoped to talk to Neal after Robin's wake, but he he'd cut out before the end. Granny's was the most likely place to find him, but he wasn't in his usual booth drinking coffee.

"Breaking and entering, darling?"

Cruella was standing in the hall when Emma looked up from her lock pick set outside Room 8.

"I... um..."

"I saw your baby daddy heading toward the pawnshop with the Bookworm while I was throwing moth balls down on passing pedestrians. Probably going to give Rumple a sponge bath or something. He must have worked up quite an order by now, going on... what is it... five... six weeks?"

"Why would you throw... never mind," sighed Emma. "Thanks."

"Just returning the favor I owed before heading on my way, darling," the odd former flapper replied while pulling a large suitcase into the hall from Room 9.

"You're leaving?"

"No reason to stay here. Certainly not some archer's funeral," Cruella replied. "Ursula has gone back to her world, Maleficent has her daughter to train. And the majority of the residents here are not from _my_ world while the only thing that could rewrite my story has been destroyed."

"We could find a way to bring it bring back. We did in that other timeline. And I thought you needed Gold's help with fake IDs?"

"It turns out his wife is quite competent in personalizing his supply of fraudulent paperwork," Cruella answered with a shrug. "And truth be told, I am what I am. Badly written, but alive," she joked and dragged her suitcase with a grunt.

Emma poofed them to the parkinglot where Cruella's car was waiting and the fur-festooned woman smiled, "Well, at least someone here has hospitality. You'll probably pay for that, though, and I'm not sure your car can take any more interest."

"Yeah... it's gonna be in the shop for awhile," sighed Emma, putting the suitcase in the trunk and trying to ignore the uncomfortably appraising, rather Hook-like, look the other woman was giving her. "Apparently you can't magic away dragon fire damage. I'm not really sure what I'll do if it can't be salvaged. It's funny, all the times I told myself I was going to sell it or just send it into a lake, but I never did, and now..."

"You're awfully attached to that yellow monstrosity, darling."

Shrugging, Emma admitted, "It's where I met Neal. It's maybe where our kid was conceived. And it was like my surrogate kid for the eleven years after giving Henry up. I moved so much that the Bug became my home. And then in that other life I just... gave it up, left in this world with everything from my life that came before finding out who I was. I would dream about finding it in the forest and getting in and it would take me back to this world and I'd just drive down the road with the windows open without a destination, like after I got out of prison, and I'd feel free... and I'd then wake up in a castle, in a marriage, with a family that felt like it belonged to someone else."

"The worst prisons, darling, are the ones we place ourselves in," Cruella mused, closing the trunk. "Thank you for the help."

As Cruella was about to get in the driver's side, Emma called out, "I killed you."

Turning, the fur-festooned woman inquired, "Pardon?"

"In another timeline," Emma explained, "I killed you. I thought you were going to kill my son, so I used magic to throw you off a cliff to your death. I didn't know that you'd been cursed."

"Yes, well, it sounds like we were all rather different in that reality, darling," Cruella reminded. "I understand that Isaac wrote me to fit my name rather than my mother being evil."

"But you were still written that way," Emma said. "So I did murder you, the good woman trapped by all of that... magical insanity."

"Who's to say there was anything left alive beneath that insanity?" Cruella countered. "I can't claim to have held it together well here."

"Why did you do it?" asked Emma. "Ask a stranger for magical powers? When I found out I had magic, it's the last thing I wanted-"

"And it has only brought you suffering," Cruella deduced. "I was a fool. I thought Isaac would give me justice with magic, but instead I killed my mother and there was no way to prove that it was self defense, and all the evidence said I'd killed her past lovers and my father rather than her having done them in. And all because I refused Isaac's marriage proposal."

"He made you need to kill and then made you unable to kill when you found a way to survive with Maleficent's help," Emma recalled. "That's horrible. I remember how it was when I was the Dark One in that other life, and even after I wasn't anymore... the dagger still called to me." And yet she'd blamed Gold so entirely for becoming the Dark One again, after he'd been bound to it for 300 years, as if she could have resisted under the same circumstances...

"Darkness, however it's put into you, is hard to tame and harder yet to purge entirely," sighed Cruella. "Maleficent gave me an outlet for it that did not quite so destroy my sanity. I suppose a part of me hoped the other end of that portal would be death, just to escape the agony. It certainly wasn't genuine affection for the child. I was no longer capable of that. And in that I discovered there is something worse than the pain of lost love or blind rage of revenge: apathy for one you once loved... or hated. That is what Isaac gave me. I loved my father. I hated my mother for taking him from me. But in making me an animal, I did not kill out of love or hate. It was just... in my nature, a primal drive without emotion."

"Well, that's definitely not how it is being the Dark One. Everything is about emotion and twisting love into hate and when it was over I _wanted_ to feel nothing," sighed Emma. "That's worse than not feeling anything. Feeling everything and wanting to escape it. Knowing you hurt the people you love because all of the little things that bugged you, that you resented, became more powerful than even true love and yet at the time, you actually believed hurting them was helping them, that the Darkness _was_ the Light."

"Perhaps," Cruella conceded, "but the _worst_ thing of all is just being alone. I spent thirty years conning old men... but alone."

"And you're going back to that?"

"I'm accepting my fate and what happiness I can find in the cards I was dealt, darling. It's better than being a pet store night janitor surviving on ramen."

"You never helped Ursula, not even when you were living the high life," Emma stated, having wondered about that oddity. "Why? Even if you were apathetic about everyone, didn't you have some... sense of decency, some feeling of obligation?"

"As I said, darling, loving someone and then growing to feel nothing for them is a terrible tragedy - and a burden for the one not afflicted by such magic. Staying was cruel. Leaving... I freed her from that burden."

Emma's brows shot up. "Wait... you and Ursula... really?"

Cruella smiled sadly. "We met long ago... or perhaps not that long ago? Time between our world and mine was so fluid. She's a mermaid so, of course, she could travel between worlds - or at least she could before the pirate took her voice. We were both quite young. But she went home - apparently to be badly scolded by her father. And I... well... my mother and stepfather were quick to beat any ideas out of me that I should entertain affection for a girl let alone _a Negro_."

Letting out a sigh, Cruella continued, "Isaac promise that he could take me with him to the Enchanted Forest. I had told him... I wanted to see an old friend, a mermaid I'd met as a child. Of course, I didn't tell him I was a bit more than a child and that we were more than friends, but perhaps he knew in his way and he just delighted in fooling me, in punishing me for the terrible crime of being pretty and making him interested in more than I had any intention to give.

"And he _did_ punish me. I'm sure that he fully intended on your parents' paths and Maleficent's crossing, in Ursula and I falling through that portal. We were all a big joke to him, people who wronged him or even just people who didn't behave as he wanted and could amuse him if he changed their stories to emulate whatever pathetic state of being under appreciated that he felt he had escaped by being chosen for such great power."

Cruella shook her head and said, "And that is why I won't wait around for some magical loophole to resurrect the biggest loophole maker, darling. I wouldn't want your son burdened with that task. And I wouldn't want the fate of the world hung upon the moods of an angry teenage boy.

"That pen," she continued, "is clearly magic not meant for mortals that turns men into monsters... and with your boy's family history, both hereditary and thanks to Regina's parenting, well... he's already predisposed to the darkness, is he not? The light in your line couldn't push back your darkness... or his the last time around. The way I see it, binding himself to that quill, to that book, and it's fraudulent interpretation of reality, doomed that world as much as you did. It made you all think the terrible things you did were justified, even heroic, because the words were spawned from the unconscious of a psychologically abused and emotionally neglected child desperate to have a family at all costs, even if the cost was ignoring that they were all greedy frauds who were destroying the world. And _that_ is a far worse mind than a run-of-the-mill narcissistic psychopath to have hold such power."

Emma grimaced at that.

"Some power we're not meant to have, darling," Cruella told her with a shrug. "And some love we're not meant to keep."

"Yeah," lamented Emma. "Me and Neal... now we're just... stuck... being these painful reminders to each other of what we could have had, but now we can't."

"Perhaps not," conceded Cruella. "But you still have family who love you... and you can always kill the psychopaths who lead you to your self-destruction and misery. You have that, at least."

"Revenge?" snorted Emma.

" _Justice_. Don't mistake charity for justice. _Or_ giving up for failure."

Cruella de Vil then got in her roadster and backed out of the parking spot with tires squealing, nearly mowing down a group of Dwarves on the way down Main Street.

Letting out a sigh, Emma pulled her swan keychain from her pocket. It _had_ survived, found in the smoldering remains of her office, but not for any magic _she'd_ put into it. The cheap wax seal replica taunted her in the afternoon light. Swans represented all of that good shit in poetry and heraldry and they mated for life. And every time she looked at it in the mirror, even just feeling the warmed metal against her skin beneath the camouflage of a turtleneck she felt like such a fraud. She wasn't a savior or a hero or even a good person. She'd chosen another. She'd chosen _wrong_.

And the little metal fob that she'd worn as a reminder not to trust anyone, as a symbol of a promise Neal had broken, was now a symbol of a promise _she_ had broken.

* * *

AN: So, if you're wondering, Tink returned the necklace to the Sheriff's Department while Emma was in NYC and no one will ever be the wiser, other than Whale, that she snagged it. I have a love-hate relationship with Cruella. Much like Zelena. On the show I hate her with her passion. Who writes a serial killer and a rapist into a family show for kids? I mean, Regina, okay, but she was the Evil Queen whose murder was canon. But why make a dog-napping fashionista a _serial killer_ who stood there and laughed as dogs mauled her mother to death _and then she killed the dogs and made a coat out of them so she could wear her murder weapons as a trophy_? But in fanfiction these characters are blunt talk gold. Since Zelena died early on, I needed another mouthpiece, and that was Cruella. May she find something like happiness in her travels!

Next up: Another funeral and another talk.


	71. No Way Home

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX**

 **NO WAY HOME  
**

The funeral service was held at the Convent's chapel that still had scorch marks on the walls from the battle with Pan's Shadow. It was attended by the surviving Merry Men and a few of the other Forest Dwellers who'd realized this was an excuse to get out of the rain for a few hours.

Little John gave a moving eulogy that was, like many eulogies, fifty percent bullshit to make the dead look better than they really were. Roland appeared mostly apathetic at the proceedings, probably because the large man had been more of a father figure in his life than his father, always tasked with babysitting him while Robin carried out daring thefts... or went on dates with Regina. With support from Archie after assessing the situation and some financial support from Regina, Little John would end up adopting the boy.

Everyone had agreed it was for the best.

Regina had spoken about the unknowable nature of soulmates and true love, wondering if what they had been told, lead to believe through ages by the fairies was bullshit that had lead to a lot of broken families and funerals.

That was when Mother Superior had kicked them all out, they'd put Robin's coffin the ground, and then all trudged to Granny's for the usual lackluster reception. Well, not everyone.

With a sigh, Emma tugged her knit beanie over her hair after finding Neal sitting on a damp piece of driftwood in the spot where she'd gone to think that day she stood him up for coffee. He didn't look up when she approached, but somehow knew it was her.

"When I think about it," he began, "I dunno which is worse. That you actually believed after being murdered and never getting to say good-bye to my son _or_ my mother that I had no unfinished business, that you lied about the effort you would have made to save me when you had already once passed up on a chance with some dead hero bullshit, that you asked me to help you split your heart for the dead hero bullshit of a man who destroyed my family as if that wouldn't be a fucking insult to my feelings for you and the actual lack of effort you made to save me, or that you didn't even know that wasn't me at all you were asking... but then the first three kind of explain the last, don't they?"

Emma had to take a shaky breath, absorbing the accusations again that she'd been facing for months now in a vicious cycle she didn't seem able to escape... because none of the explanations or justifications she gave ever seem to explain it all without her just sounding like a selfish asshole.

"I don't know what to say, Neal," she finally spoke as she sat down beside him. "I can say I'm sorry a million times. I can say I made a lot of stupid choices because I was afraid, but it obviously won't make a difference."

Neal let out a breath, then asked, "Did it ever occur to you that when Robin died before, it was for you to be with Hook? That a man who was raped by my murderer because you didn't have the balls or sense of justice to do anything about Zelena died, never got to see his son grow up _just like me_ , so you could save a rapist you met under a pile of hundreds of people whose murders he was an accomplice to? Who handed me to a child abuser for _centuries_ out of spite? Who tried to kill your entire family _out of spite_?"

Emma hung her head miserably. "I've screwed up a lot, I know. I get that how I hurt you is different from how you hurt me. You thought you were helping me, you believed I'd get that money and maybe if I had I could have raised Henry - and I was only thinking about myself, and I hurt our son with my selfishness. I don't expect you to ever forgive me, Neal. It meant a lot that you said you wanted to, one day, but... I'm guessing that's probably an unrealistic hope, isn't it? You don't trust me. Not in that way."

When Neal didn't say anything, Emma sniffed and asked, "Won't you even look at me? I know you weren't pretending to sleep at the funeral during my eulogy just to spite Robin."

He shrugged and answered, "Feels like if I do, Emma, I'll want to forgive you. _Or_ I'll want to never see you again."

She winced. "Oh..."

"Thing is, I'm not sure which is worse, because I do love you, just... You're right, I guess, that I don't trust you with my heart, with my happy ending. I want to, but you changed, you're not the woman I did trust once, and every time you do something that reminds of that fact, it's like I'm in love with a ghost. Or worse. My own delusion. That maybe I just made up some perfect version of you in my head, in my memories, after I left, to make myself believe it was worth it, that you really deserved all the happiness in the world. I don't know anymore..."

Neal shrugged again and concluded, "Maybe my leaving freed you up to be who you really are. Maybe you wanted me to stay dead because then you wouldn't feel obligated to put on an act for my benefit."

"It wasn't an act," Emma argued. "I was being honest then, Neal. That was really me. We've all got some flaws, some darkness - or maybe a spell means I didn't have my own, only what I associated with - but I _chose_ to associate with you, _and you were good and you made me stay good_. It was my fault that after you died I chose to fill that void with darkness. But I didn't do it to hurt you, to spite you, or anything like that. I loved you. I missed you. I just... I didn't want to. Because it hurt too much. Same as you being a jerk when I found you - because it meant then I couldn't reject you. It gave you the power, and I get that, okay?

"I get I was being an asshole to feel like I had control, like I can keep my heart from being broken if I gave it to someone else before I acknowledge how much it hurt to lose you and be partly to blame for your death. You died trying to get to me, to help me, and I should have been able to save you. You did everything for me and I did nothing for you. I wouldn't even let you see Henry. And that haunted me, Neal, the rest of my life, because I saw how much Henry missed you. Maybe he didn't grieve you right away, but every milestone in his life that you weren't there... he lost you all over again. And I did too. And I _should_ have shared that with him, I should have let him know I still missed you, that I wished you were there and things could have been different, but... that part me, my soul, whatever, even before the time portal, that Emma died with you, and I didn't know how to get her back. It didn't _want_ to get her back. I know that's awful. But I _do_ now. Can't you believe in that?"

Neal looked out at the ocean and after a moment, instead of answering, told her, "I was going to propose to you in Tallahassee. At least, that one day, when we had it all worked out, I knew I was gonna propose when we got there. I'd use the money from the watches to get you a real ring, we'd go to the beach... And you know," he laughed sadly, "I even did buy a ring eventually. I knew I'd never get to give it to you, but I'd take it out and think about what could have been, I'd dream about another life where we were just ordinary people, where magic wasn't fucking me over, where we were happy. Together."

"We could still have that," Emma argued while fighting tears. "When I fix things-"

"You know we can't. It doesn't work this way, Emma. No more fairy tale happily ever afters.. It's all real life from there on out."

Emma sniffled, angry with him for having lost his eternal optimism... and herself for being the reason he had.

"It doesn't have to be," Emma stated. "We can still have a happy ending. It'll be real problems that real people deal with that no one here ever does because there's always magical distractions and shit, but we had that once and we were good."

"We're not those people anymore, Emma. And we can't just go back to being them because we believe hard enough."

"People can change! _I can change_. I'm trying to," Emma insisted. "I know I still do stuff when I'm stressed or distracted, and they're nasty habbits, but afterward I feel awful about it. That has to mean something, right? That I'm not... inherently bad?"

Neal let out a sigh. "I never said I thought you were inherently bad, Emma. I don't think you or anyone is really. You just... you went down a path I couldn't follow and this one we're walking now, it's not about us. Truth is, it never was. It was all about magic."

"I don't accept that!" Emma argued. "It was my choice to love you, to want to spend my life with you."

"And it was your choice to love and want to spend your life with _Killian_ ," Neal reminded. "And his opinion of you was the most important thing in the world, whether it was calling you a useless bitch one day or his become of mortal fortitude the next. Sorry if I don't put much stock in your choices, Emma, and what that says about us. Once you want a homicidal rapist to be proud of you for screwing over your family to save his worthless ass, that doesn't hold much weight."

"How many times do I have to say regret all of that, Neal!?" Emma snapped. "Because I do! Every part of me does! I want to erase it from my memory. I want to make it so it never happened and we have that life I know we both dreamed about! But I can't! All I can do is say that I love you and try to show you that I do, but I you don't believe me when I say it, and nothing I do is proof enough! Why won't you even give me a chance? Are you trying to spite me for not choosing you? At least tell me that."

"I'm not trying to hurt you," sighed Neal.

"And I'm not trying to hurt you!" Emma countered. "I meant what I said that I couldn't be me without you. That Emma had to died. I had to change to move on from that pain and face all the shit that was being thrown at me! So I did it fast. And I fell down that time portal and my soul got sucked out and without it, without that love, that guilt, that pain, _all of it_ , it was easier to just be changed. I didn't know I could split my heart. I didn't know there was an Underworld. And, okay, maybe even if I did, I wouldn't have tried to save you, and I'm so sorry. I'm sorry how disgustingly selfish that is, what a bad person that makes me.

"Maybe there is something just _wrong_ in me, because of my parents' spell or my genes, or whatever that made it easy for me to change from someone you trusted into the image Hook envisioned of me, of us, but it was mostly lies. I married him, but I knew deep down I was only doing it out of guilt, out of what I did to him, because I couldn't let Robin's sacrifice be for nothing, because my parents kept encouraging me, because even Henry seemed onboard with it. I don't know... it was just a lot of guilt and peer pressure and self-loathing and fear of ending up alone, and there were days when I would look in the mirror and tell myself that this was the new me, this was the stronger me that could bury the past and embrace all this fairy tale nonsense completely so I had to keep going even though I hated that person, even though I missed the good, honest, just person I was before I came here.

"I missed who I was, Neal. But I couldn't be her without you. I couldn't handle everything. Only the asshole Emma could... but that obviously turned out a disaster too... so the point is I can't do this without you, Neal. I'm either not strong enough, or I'm a selfish bitch who ruins it all in the end."

Neal shook his head. "You can't need me that much, Emma. I can't be your conscience version of whatever Hook was, your desperate something that you clung to like a barnacle. It was bad enough being the loser in your teenage vampire novel love triangle, but I can't be your relationship gender role reversal reason you don't do bad things. That's not how love's supposed to work. And it sure as shit isn't fair to me, not after what I went through with my father."

"I didn't mean... I don't..." Emma trailed off, because she didn't really know what she was trying to say other than what he assumed, which she knew wasn't healthy. She'd been Hook's conscience, and a really shitty one at that who basically just let him get away with murder and called him a hero. She didn't want to put Neal in that position, force him to compromise his own moral fortitude for love, and maybe that's what would happen. Maybe her love would destroy him the way Hook's love destroyed her.

"Sometimes you just end up alone," said Neal. "I've spent like ninety-nine percent of my life alone, so I know it hurts and it's fucking unfair, but you can't make up bullshit reasons to not be alone when you fuck it up. I tried and I got shot."

"I know," sniffed Emma. "You're right. I don't want to put that kind of pressure on you. I don't... I don't want to ruin you, taint all of the goodness in your heart the way mine was. Maybe I can't change. Maybe I can't make the right choices and even with a second chance I'll just screw up. But I'm trying to change. And you being here, that makes it easier. You make me remember the good person I was before all of this and now that's not a bad thing, _because you're here_. You make me want to be that Emma again."

"I want you to be that Emma again," said Neal, shaking his head. "I saw you become the very thing you once hated, that caused you a childhood full of pain and not even seem to notice or care. It was like watching a kid who was abused grow up to smack her kid around without ever thinking 'this is so fucked up'. It broke my heart."

After a pause, he continued, "And the thing is? I hoped that when you finally got your soul back, it would hurt like hell, it would break your heart, because that would at least mean you weren't fully committed to all of the shit you did. But I hate that I wanted that. You're not supposed to want the person you love to hurt for your benefit, to prove you right. I'm no better than Hook thinking like that..."

"You _are_ better than him," Emma insisted. "You wanted me to still have a conscience for me, so I'd be a good person again, not so I'd fall into bed with you. You've always been about what's best for everyone else, Neal, and that's what makes you better than him... along with a whole bunch of other things, like not raping or murdering anyone."

"Yeah," he laughed dryly, "but even in the real world the pretty bad boys still win out. Us regular Joes in thirft store clothes end up drinking coffee alone."

"I was going to meet with you."

"And I didn't call the cops on you." Neal sighed. "I stood you up in the parking garage and you went to prison for eleven months. So you stood me up at the diner and I fell down a portal and ended up in a cage for eleven months. But those things don't cancel each other out. Not when we had a son I risked my life to help rescue."

Neal shook his head, concluding, "We are how we were written - or how we could write ourselves to be after Henry got that quill - and you didn't write yourself to be better, instead you made yourself into the person you became, made yourself fit into a bad carbon copy of another story, and that... that's the biggest fucking insult to Tallahassee, Emma. Not that you chose to find it with _him_ , but what you _did to yourself_ to get it."

"But I didn't get it! There was no Tallahassee without you!" Emma exclaimed. "I didn't want it without you. And you had no right to just tell me to find it with someone else! _And will you at least look at me_!?"

Neal stood up, facing away from her.

She stood up too, frustrated. "Damn it, Neal, I-"

"Don't get to play the victim, Emma!" he cut her off, finally turning to look at her, his eyes flashing with anger but also red from tears. "If that's how you felt, then you should have told me that! If that's how you felt then you should have fucking kissed me and maybe that magic of yours would have worked! But you didn't do either! At the very least, if you'd told me that, it would have hurt a lot less when I was dying, knowing we at least had that dream as ours and only ours, even if it had died long before me."

"Neal-"

Emma stepped toward him and tried to lay her hand on his arm, but he stepped back and turned away again.

"I can't, Emma. I _can't_. I had to look up into your eyes and know that I loved you more than you loved me, that you would always be my true love, but I wouldn't always be yours if I ever had been, and everything, the tragic fucked up mess of my life, it was too much bare that I was gonna die and be replaced as your true love, as the man who'd raise my son, by the guy who destroyed my family. It was like... the Universe or God or whatever hated me for not dying as a kid and just kept screwing me over for surviving by no one _ever_ choosing me. No matter how many people I tried to help, no matter how many times I passed on my own happiness for others, there was never any good karma on the back end. You're supposed to do good and good things happen to you, but I did good and all I got was more bad, more disappointment, more abandonment 'cause all the good things I thought I was doing amounted to nothing, were canceled out by some magical bullshit and everyone else getting second chances, getting forgiveness, getting true love. I never got any of that. All I wanted my whole life was a family, and instead I got conned into leaving 'em, the mother of my child chose the man my mother chose over me, and even my old man moved on, replaced me with another kid while my own was growing up without me, was always gonna think I was some uninteresting loser who didn't matter enough in the grand magical scheme of things to get the same loopholes as all the legends he read about in that book, the rest of his family who _mattered_."

"Neal, _you matter_ ," Emma insisted, crying now. "I told you, Henry missed you-"

"He didn't even know me, because you didn't tell him about me," Neal corrected. "I was just a vague concept. A father. We played with wooden swords. I let him stand at the helm of the _Jolly Roger_ , but teaching him to swordfight? To sail? Even those went to your father and Hook. I didn't teach him anything."

"You did. You taught him the power of forgiveness. And of taking responsibility for mistakes. And that no matter how many obstacles life throws your way, you can still have hope, you can still be a good person who sees the goodness in others," Emma insisted. "Maybe I didn't tell him enough about you, and I'm _sorry_ , and maybe you didn't teach him all of the bullshit stuff that my parents seem to think is what constitutes parenthood, that they passed me over to have another go at it for, but sailing and sword-fighting aren't what real heroes are remembered for. It was your heart, your goodness, your kindness, your bravery even when no one would know, when you wouldn't get written about in a magical book, that made you more important to Henry than anyone else. I'm not saying he realized that as a hormonal teenager caught between a crush and wanting to measure up to the crazy powers and adventurous resumes of his surviving family, but I know he did when he became a father."

"Even though he didn't really," sighed Neal.

"And I have that to live with too," Emma uttered. "That I passed up my happy ending to follow some crap my parents were selling and in doing so I indoctrinated Henry into the same view of love and happiness that was all a lie. It has to be some great cosmic joke that my parents are true love, soulmates, but have no fucking clue what that actually means or how to help other people find it."

"Yeah, must be," Neal chuffed.

"I know I screwed up, Neal. I know you suffered for a long time and I am _so_ sorry that your life was filled with such loneliness and pain, and that at the end I just made it worse. I didn't know, not fully, not really, because I didn't want to - how much you'd suffered. I didn't want to see how my choices, what I was using to feel better about my crazy life, were a betrayal of everything you did for me - and our love. But you have to believe if I'd known how badly you were hurt, how much your mother leaving you for Hook, that he handed you to Pan and never tried to free you, that I wouldn't have chosen him. I _want_ to believe that I would have chosen you, chosen honoring your memory and your sacrifice over feeling good."

"I want to believe that too," agreed Neal. "But I don't know if I can."

Emma watched him walk down the beach, hands shoved into the pockets of his thrift store coat, his ugly-ass shoes sinking into the sand as he went. It felt like he was walking away from her for good, that a door had been shut, locked, and covered over in bricks and mortar.

She thought of Tinerkbell's hypothesis about Regina and Robin, that when the timing was all wrong, instead of completing each other and making each other better, they broke each other, ruined each other's happiness. She'd been fighting against that, wanting to prove it wrong with them - but maybe Cruella was right, that sometimes you had to give up the fight, that admitting defeat was the less painful option, because then at least the cycle ended.

Pulling out the keychain again, Emma regarded the little swan that had meant a variety of things to her over the years.

Once upon a time it was akin to an engagement ring, and it still meant more than any actual engagement ring she'd been given. It didn't have some deep family history and it hadn't been enchanted by a sorcerer. It was just a cheap token presented in a moment of pure happiness, a moment when anything was possible, when two people were in perfect harmony and happily ever after was unknowingly within their grasp.

But it had all gone to shit. Pinocchio had interfered, the keychain was lost and returned as a symbol of betrayal, viewed so wrongly and unfairly by her for years until she tossed it away to put an end to the bitterness... only for Neal to return it as he lay dying.

She'd put it on for his funeral and had intended never to take it off to honor him, but when she became the Dark Swan everything she'd worn was stripped away and not returned when the Darkness was pulled out of her. And that had changed her, no matter how she'd tired to pretend it hadn't. Soul or no soul, it was being the Dark One that created a greater rift between her physical self and that spark of conscience, that place from which love _truly_ came.

And then it had been easier to embrace her new life, her new "love" and put away all those momentos in her keepsake box that she'd rarely opened, because those tokens reminded her that she was a good person once, taunted her that she was _not_ a good person anymore, and all for the biggest lie told in her life made up so many lies.

The irony was, of course, that it was the one she told herself.

She'd thought of herself as a phoenix once, rising from the ashes of that prison.

But she was no Firebird and the cigar box she'd later realized was the reason Henry had chosen that operation - to get back the mother he missed - was burned now, turned to ash. And her son never had gotten that Emma back, because sharing her heart with a villain was never going to erase the stain that being the Dark One had left on her soul and her heart.

Neal was now out of sight. The clouds had grown thicker and a cool breeze now buffeted the beach. Another front was moving in.

* * *

AN: Nothing but angst for those two!

Next up: Some humor for a change!


	72. Forgot About Rumple

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN**

 **FORGOT ABOUT RUMPLE**

 _Ya'll know me still the same OG_

 _But I been low key_

 _Hated on by most these niggas_

 _With no cheese, no deals and no G's, no wheels and no keys_

 _No boats, no snowmobiles and no skis_

 _Mad at me cause_

 _I can finally afford to provide my family with groceries_

 _Got a crib with a studio and it's all full of tracks_

 _To add to the wall full of plaques_

 _Hanging up in the office in back of my house like trophies_

 _But ya'll think I'm gonna let my dough freeze_

 _Ho Please_

 _You better bow down on both knees_

 _Who you think taught you to smoke trees?_

 _Who you think brought you the oldies?_

"Turn that off!" Belle scolded, entering the shop to find Hook blaring rap music from an iPhone placed beside Rumple's head.

"What? I figured I'd wake him up by offending his eardrums," Hook huffed.

"All you're doing is making him weaker, you idiot! Just like Regina yelling at him!" Belle exclaimed, holding out her bell jar with the pathetic looking rose in it. "And stop getting crumbs all over him! Did you steal those from Granny's?"

"There was no sign that said 'just take one'," Hook argued. "People didn't really seem in an eating mood, what with the whole depressing funeral thing. And I was going to dust-buster him off later."

"God, you are turning into an even bigger pain in the ass since you ass got bigger!"

"There is nothing wrong with my arse!"

"Hook, you're fat!"

"No, I'm not! It's muscle!"

"No, it's fat! And I think all that transfat must be reacting adversely with whatever hair growth tonic shit you're taking from that Shaman con artist, because even Snow didn't blimp up that fast when she was pregnant. It's not healthy!"

"I am not fat! You take that back!" Hook demanded.

"Or what? You'll punch me? Shoot me in the back? Good luck catching me even in stripper heals! And I don't think your fat finger could fit around the trigger!" Belle taunted. "Now. Get. Out. Fat. Pirate. Whore."

Hook glared and took his grocery bag of pilfered funeral reception food and Henry's stolen iPhone. "You're mean."

"You're fat. And slutty. And you fathered a child with your own mother and then made out with the grandchild produced from that incestuous family tree, you sicko!"

"I told you that in confidence to help me deal with it not taunt me with it!" Hook wined.

"Then you shouldn't have tried to kill my husband with music while using him as a table for your stolen junk food!"

"Yeah, well, your mom got eaten by ogres! _You_ should develop an eating disorder over _that_!"

With that lame insult, Hook retreated from the back of the pawn shop. Belle could hear him muttering about his pickled hand in the jar behind the counter before he left completely, and then she was finally alone, left to dust-buster off her husband.

"God, he is such a teenage girl!" Belle groaned. "It was fun at the start pretending to be his friend, secretly planning to betray him in some horrible way after I had earned his trust and maybe even gotten him to try and sleep with me so I could record it on video and show it to Emma and then we could tag-team beat his ass into the ground, but... ugh... it's just too much work! He's so whiny and needy and emotional _all the time_. I really should just give up. It was a good plan, Rumple, but he's _exhausting_. And he ruined your tie...

"I'm sorry, Rumple," she sighed at the grease stains on his favorite silk tie that would never come out, not even with magic, because silk had special properties... which gossip around town had something to do with why Snow White was banned from the dry cleaner.

"I'm sorry for so many things, not just your tie," she continued. "I've placed a lot of expectations on you and none on myself. I blame you for not being strong enough to fight the Darkness, but then I don't help you fight it. I keep threatening to leave you, I don't even know why. Maybe because you sent me away when I could have saved you. Maybe a part of me is still bitter over that and what it cost me, though I know you've suffered horribly since, enough that we should be even in that regard. Too bad the heart isn't logical."

While sweeping up the crumbs on the floor, Belle mused, "Things would be a lot easier for Neal and Emma if they were, that's for sure. They've been avoiding each other the past couple of days. Or rather Neal has been voiding Emma... and I think her parents have been avoiding both of them. Snow said they had a big fight at the Sheriff's Station when she came to pick up Jerry. She cried. I had to make her tea. It was a whole thing. God, The Charmings are annoying, aren't they?

"Anyway," Belle switched topics, "the funeral wasn't bad. Roland is going to live with Little John who's been more of a father to him than Robin since Marian's disappearance. I think Archie will miss looking after him, even if it was just for few days to deal with his nightmares. We really need to find a way to uncurse that poor guy. I'm thinking we can get Tinkerbell to steal the Black Fairy's wand. I'm not sure we want to try the Sorcerer's wand after the mass murder mess. It's clearly the more evil of the two. But, anyway, Archie is so lonely and it's just unnatural and I think he and Dr. Whale would be good together, don't you? He'd curb Viktor's mad scientist tendencies and Viktor would encourage Archie to be more extroverted, have more fun...

"Of course, who knows how any of us would be if we weren't bound to that book? It might not be as strongly in this world, but it's strong enough. I had an interesting talk about with Cruella and she helped me do some research into the quill and those books, and it's all very sketchy, Rumple," said Belle. "The Authors aren't just vessels that allow for the unbiased recording of history through some sort of magic taken from the Oracle at Delphi. I'm not sure if Hades meddled or some darker force, but the intentions of those who wield the pen have substantial influence, even subconsciously, so Isaac was influencing all of our lives even when he wasn't intentionally writing it down wrong, which means at least a generation of events and people are all screwed up. Who knows, maybe in his sleep he made The Charmings transform into selfish idiots? Maybe he made _you_ not trust me when I kissed you! All I know is that we're not who we're supposed to be, and I think Emma is supposed to fix that, and that's why Neal was brought back, not because of killing Zelena by destroying the time spell. It's something greater than us, than magic, I think. Because, really, when you think about it, our world is stuck, unable to become something more, just like _all of us_.

"There's no new frontier in our world. So you have to wake up so we can figure out what this means!"

A cough from the bed caused Belle to startled. "Rumple!?"

His eyes pealed open. "Belle," he rasped out, "I love you, and I agree, but my ears are still ringing from that damned demon music, so do kindly _shut up_."

Belle broke into a wide grin. "Oh, Rumple, I knew you could hear me!"

"Unfortunately," he mumbled under his breath while accepting her hug and kiss.

"Oh, don't be such a grouch!" Belle admonished. "Just because you're not the Dark One doesn't mean you can't be powerful and important. Also, you are so going to therapy for trying to switch the daggers so you could use it to become an even more powerful Dark One when Emma used the Promethian Flame and Farther killed Merlin."

"You're not going to divorce me?" Rumple asked, surprised as he sat up.

"Did you hear anything I said? Of course not. Just the usual trial separation thing we're so good at," Belle told him. "I know you only did it because you are insecure and this family of hypocritical assholes treats you like complete crap if they acknowledge you at all, which is only when they need your Dark One powers. It's the only way you know how to be needed or included, but that's _their_ problem, not yours, Rumple. They're assholes. They're the 'cool kids' in our fake high school memories who only ever needed us to help them pass exams and then pranked us at the prom."

"Yes, they are that," sighed Rumple. "I don't know why Ba-Neal wants to belong to their shallow little clique - or have anything to do with Emma Swan now that he knows what - or whom- she did."

Belle smiled sadly. "Neal loves her, or at least he loves the Emma who was one of the outcasts, just like him. I think he wishes they could get that back, get that Emma back... and I think Emma really wants to get her back too, but-"

"But once you start changing," sighed Rumple, "it's not so easy to change back. She'll only end up hurting him more, Belle... as I keep hurting you."

"And I have kept hurting you. But that's our choice, to be open to that hurt," Belle reminded and squeezed his hand. "I just wish they would be. Emma spends a lot of time drinking coffee alone at Granny's, listening to Tinkerbell's stories about Baelfire in Neverland like she's trying to punish herself by hearing about the conditions he lived in because of Hook."

"As well she should!"

"Rumple," Belle sighed. "She _died_."

"As did I. But no one threw me a 'welcome back' party did they? They completely forgot that I sacrificed my life for them just because the only way for my return was to be as the Dark One again, even though that's all I was ever good to them for, as you said. But, apparently, that idiot girl becomes the Dark One, turns Hook into the Dark Two, and suddenly all of their scheming and murdering and back-stabbing and emotional abuse is adorable and instantly forgivable and worth blackmailing me _and you_ to sweep all that under the rug so they can live happily ever after."

Frowning, Belle deduced, "You saw some thing while you were... wherever you were."

"There are many possible timelines, most of which do not come to pass," sighed Rumple, "many of them destroyed by our so-called Savior's idiocy. If not for her torrid affair with my son..."

"It was hardly torrid, Rumple. It sounds more like Emma and Hook-"

"I don't even want to think about that little skank and Milah's sloppy seconds. I actually felt bad for binding a child to that curse to find my son, but after all the things she has done to hurt him and just be a selfish little fool in general? I don't," Rumple growled. "She doesn't deserve my son. She doesn't deserve to raise _her_ son any more than Regina."

Rumple let out a sigh and lamented, "Unfortunately, no one in this family deserves to raise the boy... and at this point, I fear, Henry himself has been too tainted. It's a lucky thing he _did_ destroy that pen before he was seduced by teenage hormones and his mothers' heavy-handed attempt to keep him safe which has resulted in a dangerous inferiority complex that, in this family leads one to making bad choices in the name of pride which leads to getting a taste for power that we are clearly predisposed to crave like Hook craves rum and... whatever this is," he grumbled, brushing some crumbs out of his breast pocket.

"Crab puffs. He's been obsessed with them since Camelot."

"Well I'm sure he does have a long history with crabs," snarked Rumple and Belle giggled.

"No doubt."

"So... he really did father Queen Eva by his own mother? I figured something shady had gone down with that girl's adoption when I heard whispers that it was claimed I brokered it for those royals, but I didn't imagine a case of seaside incest, suicide, and mermaid time portals. Frankly, I didn't even know mermaids could create time portals. We really must steal that hair net and examine it..."

"Rumple, you are not using a magical hair net to try and travel back in time and get your Dark One powers back!" Belle scolded.

"Can I at least use it to drown Hook? That would be wonderfully ironic."

Belle sighed. "No. It's too much fun fat shaming him and making 'your mama' jokes. Besides, he's got all those doubloons he's paying Archie for therapy and Archie does owe you back rent on both his apartment and his office."

Rumple groaned. "Darn you, woman, appealing to my greed to curb my thirst for power!"

"That's why you love me," Belle boasted. "I know how to use your worst qualities for good."

* * *

AN: Rumple is back! (The song is obviously "Forgot About Dre".)

Next up: Emma finally moves out of Granny's and has a deja vu moment.


	73. Apologize

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to jane: They are massive hypocrites and Emma is definitely a Barbie Doll. I hate what Belle has become on the show, though the more of a two-faced bitch she becomes, the clearer it becomes that she does not suffer from Stockholm Syndrome (and the more it becomes clear that Emma does). Belle seems to be a morally gray character by nature who is in denial that she actually wants (even needs) to be less ethical because her academic upbringing schooled her in the philosophy of ethics and makes her feel bound by some social contract to follow it. Rumple, by contrast, is a morally gray character who has come to believe he needs power and to have power be on the opposing side of the ethical spectrum from Belle, because power is always dark magic/The Dark One which cannot be good. They SHOULD balance each other into each seeing that they don't need to be TOTALLY GOOD or TOTALLY BAD to be heroic people.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT**

 **APOLOGIZE**

Emma slumped in the driver's seat of her mother's used Suburban after putting the car into park and just because she was feeling particularly emo turned up the volume on the radio.

 _...You tell me that you're sorry, didn't think I'd turn around, and say (that)_

 _"It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."_

 _I said, "It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."_

 _I'd take another chance, take a fall, take a shot for you_

 _And I need you like a heart needs a beat, but it's nothin' new (yeah)_

 _I loved you with a fire red, now it's turning blue, and you say,_

 _"Sorry," like the angel heaven let me think was you, but I'm afraid..._

 _"It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."_

 _I said, "It's too late to apologize (it's too late)."_

Emma cut the engine before the refrain's repeat and let out a weary sigh as a light rain began pitter-pattering on the windshield, blurring Storybrooke's few street lights and illuminated shop fronts.

Her conversation with Neal, her attempt to apologize (again) - which was maybe kind of insane because he was the one who'd insulted her parents and walked off last week - hadn't gone as she'd hoped (again). She had to be some kind of masochist, she supposed, but she'd been indoctrinated into this whole 'never give up, always fight for the one you love because love makes every stupid thing you do okay no matter how much it endangers everyone you love' thing... which maybe, as Cruella had said, wasn't actually the healthiest approach to every love.

It just really _really_ sucked, Emma gloomily considered, that after everything they'd both gone through, after all of the separations and mistakes and tragedies that they couldn't get Tallahassee. That concept had been such a central aspiration in her life since the age of seventeen, and even if she'd stopped believing in it for a decade or so, it had still been there as an unobtainable goal, a dream of a different and better life that might have been.

Which was all it was going to be.

She'd had her chances, more than one, when Neal had been willing, before he died (the last time) and she'd blown it. Hell, she'd even blown it in that trick of a "vision" when she thought it was him. Maybe if she'd said something different, been honest, or if she'd stopped being afraid and an idiot and put him first - or _hell_ put Henry first - now he'd be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But he hadn't.

Whatever unfinished business he'd had wasn't with her other than to tell her it was over, that she'd proven herself someone he couldn't trust with his heart, someone he seemed to not even like - not that she could blame him with either.

A knock on the window startled her and Emma looked up to find her mother standing on the sidewalk with a bag of groceries. She reflexively reached over to unlock the passenger side and the pixie-haired woman slipped in out of the rain.

"Thanks, I didn't bring my umbrella to the pharmacy," Snow explained. "Do you mind if I wait it out?"

"It's your car," shrugged Emma, adding, "I could drive you."

"Three blocks? And you have your trailer hitched. It's fine. I can wait. Let David change some diapers for once."

"Like you've changed many," Emma muttered under her breath, but not low enough the other woman didn't hear and give her a pinched look. "Sorry."

"No, it's fair. I haven't been as present in your bother's life as I should have been. I'm trying to change that," Snow told her with a tight smile. "Just like I'm trying to change things with you."

She reached into her bag and pulled out cups of cocoa from Granny's, and Emma rolled her eyes. "So, the groceries were a con?"

"I wasn't sure free hot chocolate would be enough to get you to open the door," Snow admitted. "You've been... hard to read since the whole..."

"Thing with Neal walking out after calling you and Dad bad parents who screwed him and me over?"

"Which I assume you don't disagree with."

Emma grimaced and inhaled the scent of chocolate and cinnamon from her cup. "You want the truth?"

"I've already gotten a sampling of it," said Snow, "I think I can handle it."

Letting out a sigh, Emma told her, "I think you and Dad only care about yourselves but you pretend to care about other people to look good, because you want to be heroes and heroes have to look like they care about other people, that they'd put strangers before themselves. Only you never do that, not really, without an ulterior motive you can put some pretty, deceptive wrappings on that make it look like you're doing it for some selfless reason.

"Like jumping down that hat hole after me. Was that really for me? Or because you wanted me to accept that you were my mother and have some mother-daughter moment _for you to feel less guilty about what you did_?"

Emma shook her head and continued, "Or when you cast the Dark Curse. Was it really to save everyone from Zelena? Was it even to save your unborn kid from her? Because splitting your heart _could_ have killed you. And if it was _really_ about everyone you wouldn't have risked a shitstorm of magical price backlash fucking over everyone you were supposedly trying to save just because you couldn't live without Dad. That's not true love. It's not heroic. And it sure as shit is _not_ good parenting.

"And Neal. Not my Neal but my brother, whatever name you want him to go by, the kid is just an unfortunate prop to make you feel good, to make Dad feel like he has someone to protect to stroke his macho ego. He's not a person, not really. He's not someone you want to encourage to have his own opinions, his own hopes and dreams if they don't line up perfectly with yours.

"Like were you going to really give me a choice in going with you back to the Enchanted Forest with those magic beans? Fuck no. I was the last to hear about it and the moment I even hinted at an expression of reluctance you both ganged up on me with a shit-ton of _shaming_ me into going with you, because, 'Hey, Emma, your life in this world has completely sucked from the start and no one here has ever loved you so how can you be happy here?' Yeah, way to support my free will, but then you took that way before I was born, right, so I shouldn't be surprised!" Emma hissed out.

"We just... we wanted you to be happy. You were so unhappy," Snow squeaked out.

"Yeah, I was unhappy, because I was living a real life with complications. I was trying to not deal with my first love, my kid's father showing up with a fiancée and acting like a jerk. So you went from trying to pressure me into admitting I was in love with him to a 180 'fuck it and come with us, and who cares if your son grows up without ever knowing his father? We're the only ones that matter!' That's your definition of family and that's what you used to screw Neal over, _and screw me and Henry over_.

"And that's what lead to my own brother siring the fucking antichrist! I mean, my daughter, who I had with my own fucking great grandfather had a kid by my own brother! That's the kids you raised! A couple of incestuous assholes! And you think you're good parents?

"You're _not_ ," Emma continued to lay into her wide-eyed mother who flinched at the rather vicious character assault. "You only care about me and my brother _when it's about you_. You had another baby because _you_ wanted someone to grow up adoring you the way you did your mother. You wanted so badly to get back to Storybrooke from The Underworld after Cruella damaged the loved-one-haunting phone booth, and Dad wanted so _not_ to go back and have you go instead that he had Hook vandalize your gravestone to put his name on it so you could hitch a ride with Ruby to Oz to get there and he could continue to hang out with Robin's innocent baby and Belle who was pregnant, _and Henry_ , and how is that selfless? How is that being a good parent or a hero? Near as I can figure, you guys only want to be parents to be needed and loved unconditionally by someone who'll be so indoctrinated they'll never be able to truly hate you for the fuckups you are the way Henry can't Regina, but he can hate me and I can mean it when I say I'm never going to love you the way you want, cause I came on the scene late."

As Snow looked ready to burst into tears, Emma told her, "I'm not saying I didn't totally go along with all of the selfishness that went down over the years, but it's pretty well established that I'm an asshole here who makes shitty life choices and endangers people instead of helping them - but at least I've acknowledge that and it feels like crap and I don't think a cup of hot chocolate and pretending I have some sage wisdom to give will make it better. So please stop pretending your parental concern is anything more than wanting to feel good about yourself, like you're not fucking it all up. Because you are, you have, and you can't fix it!

" _You ruined my entire life_ ," Emma told her, clutching the cup so hard the hot chocolate nearly sloshed out, "with one incredibly selfish choice that even if you didn't know it was sending a baby through a portal was at the very least criminal animal abuse. Then you doubled down sending me 'alone' in a magical wardrobe where I'd have frozen to death if not for a little brat stowing away and abandoning me anyway. But, hey, why not then tell me I'm a disappointment and you want another kid to feel like you're doing it right? And then tell my kid's father to fuck the hell off, the family motto doesn't apply to the next generation unless it's pairing me up with a pretty asshole you could put in fancy clothes and pass off as cliché prince material, because who cares if Henry recording that all in a book for future generations teaches that men can be lecherous and violent but all they have to do is smirk and pursue a 'damaged' woman and they're considered a hero - if it makes for a pretty family portrait?"

"Emma," Snow tried to interject, "whatever happened before-"

" _A lot of bad shit happened,_ " Emma cut her off. "It happened and it changed me into someone who wasn't just damaged but who damaged my kids _and the whole universe_. I became someone unrecognizable, and mostly because it's all about fucking appearances with you and Dad. I used to be pissed at everyone in this place blaming their parents for how they turned out such awful people, but I get it now. It's really a thing. It's really how it works with our kind.

"Because I didn't used to be like that," Emma continued. "Growing up, I wasn't a bad person. I wasn't selfish or shallow and I didn't betray the people I loved for superficial bullshit and call myself a hero. If I fucked up, I owned it and it ate away at me. I didn't say 'Oops, I'll say it was destiny testing me and totally be a better person now so I never have to regret anything!' And I got that being obsessively pretty on the outside usually meant being disgustingly ugly on the inside. And that abusive men don't change.

"But you got me to buy into this fairy tale garbage that says it's the opposite, that everything is exactly as pretty and perfect as it looks. So my happy ending was losing my soul and splitting my heart with a man who was either putting me down and blaming me for things I didn't do to feel worse about myself or idealizing me, praising me for things I didn't deserve, so I'd be grateful to him for loving someone so fucked up as me. I actually ended up with someone who made me feel like trash half the time and enabled me being a selfish bitch the other half, but that was true love, and he had half my heart, so I was trapped. I was so trapped I wasn't even able to feel it most of the time, because the darkness he put into his half of my heart was nurtured by our toxic 'love' until we were just two halves of the same horrible person.

"So what happened before?" Emma told her, "I can't forget it. It was a sham, a lie, a fucking illusion, _but it ruined my life and destroyed the universe_ and now I'm supposed to clean up my mess, which doesn't make me a hero, it just makes me pathetic.

"My son hates me. His father is disgusted by me. I'm disgusted by me!" Emma exclaimed, "And you don't really love me, you just tell yourself that you do because you're supposed to."

"Emma..."

"Please, just go. Thanks for the hot chocolate, but you've done enough."

Snow looked so heartbroken, but Emma couldn't find it in herself to care as her mother got out and hurried down the street. Maybe that made her a bad person on top of everything else. Or maybe she'd just been hurt by her family's lies and manipulations so many times that she just didn't have it in her to completely forgive them, or even like them.

Which, she realized depressingly, was exactly how Neal felt about her. It was a fucked up cycle that her parents had started, that his parents had started, and passed on to them, that had ended up destroying Henry's happy ending too.

They had lived in a lie, ascribed to an illusion like some brainwashed cult members, believing everything was sunshine and rainbows while all around them was misery and death - _but who cares?_ As long as the victims didn't share their blood or their beds it was unfortunate collateral damage then it had nothing to do with them or it was some lesson of destiny to make them hold on tighter to their fraudulent lives, their disgustingly creepy true love that had been so watered down in its parameters that it might as well have included rape and pedophilia... and, hell, maybe it even did for some when it all ended in an incestuous orgy!

They were such a fucking mess. How was she supposed to fix something so fucked up beyond all recognition?

"This whole world is totally evil without romance, love, family happiness, happy endings…" Emma snorted as she turned the radio back on.

REM's "Losing My Religion" filled the cab of the Suburban and Emma gave another snort.

She definitely wasn't feeling the love for any deities right now.

* * *

AN: "C$ teaches us that men can be lecherous & violent but all they have to do is smirk & pursue a "damaged" woman and they're considered a hero" was a tweet by NotSoEvilRegal. Emma's closing line is Amazon-Hollow's comment on "Ruby Slippers" at that concludes, "Because everything is filled up with action, killing, violence and murder..."

Next up: Ruby gets a new job. Emma has a traumatic experience.


	74. Snowing Get Freaky (Emma Freaks Out)

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: You have nothing to apologize for. Trolls are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE**

 **SNOWING GET FREAKY (EMMA FREAKS OUT)**

(flashback)

1994

Emma sat on the big couch in the group home administrator's office with her legs clenched tightly together and her hands fisting in her blanket. She knew it was babyish of her to need it. She _was_ ten, almost eleven, after all. She'd stopped sleeping with it and taking it in her backpack to school when she was eight and she got shipped off to a different foster home after she punched a boy in the face at recess for stealing her blanket and making fun of her having it, because what kind of loser kept the blanket they were named after by parents who dumped them in it by the side of the road to die?

So, yeah, Emma knew she was kind of messed up before she even got sent back to the group home the first time by the Swans or she wouldn't have kept _that_ name either. She didn't even know what last name the social worker gave her as a baby - if any - since the family that took her in when she was three weeks old and was planning to adopt her had a court make "Swan" her official legal last name. Of course, if a family ever adopted her they'd probably change that, but it wasn't looking much like anyone would want her.

"Emma," the dark-haired lady told her, "it's okay to talk about it. No one's going to get mad at you."

Emma shook her head. "I don't want to," she meekly told the lady who sighed.

"All right. You don't have to this time, but I have something for you."

The lady reached into a drawer in her desk and pulled out a rubber ducky. "This is Mr. Quackington," she said, holding out the toy, "and you can keep him."

After a moment of hesitation, Emma took the ubiquitous rubber ducky and brows furrowed asked, "Really?"

"Only if you want to."

Emma considered Mr. Quackington. She was too old for stupid toys like rubber duckies. But... she had so few things that were hers, that weren't second hand, stolen, or charity.

"Thank you," she told the lady and wrapped Mr. Quackington in her blanket. "Can I go now?"

Emma didn't wait for more than a nod, springing up from the couch and bolting from the room.

* * *

(present day... as in somewhere around the Spring of 2013, give or take six months to a year!)

Emma sat at Granny's spinning her Sheriff badge on the counter as looking through the real estate section as she finished her dinner... which was probably no better or worse than whatever her parents had made. Rain all week had kept most dinner customers away and Ruby gave her a sympathetic look.

"Still nothing, huh?"

"It's as bad as when I first moved here. I think a bunch of the Forest Dwellers must have jumped at the chance to get places after the whole massacre thing made them realize living in the forest actually was pretty dumb. Belle's even subletting her apartment above the Library to Tinkerbell, and there's no way I'm rooming with that insane klepto fairy."

"Then go back to the Loft," shrugged Ruby. "I know they're jerks, but a warm bed over the back of that old Suburban? If you won't stay here, at least give it a thought. You're going to be in traction by the end of the week."

"I dunno," Emma shook her head. "I kept getting sucked back into that place before. It has too many memories, too many of them of me being someone I'm ashamed of."

"Don't tell me you banged Hook in your bed?"

Emma winced and rubbed her temples. "Er... well... no... not in the bed."

"Okay, now I'm never touching anything in that place again," said the digested waitress and she handed Emma her change and a take-away bag. "I might get some astral cross-temporal pirate jizz on my hands."

"Funny."

"I thought so."

Emma pocketed her change and regarded the badge again. Instead of clipping it back to her waistband she told Ruby, "You know, I only took the job to have an excuse to be around Henry?"

"But you were good at it," Ruby told her. "Graham wouldn't have hired you if he didn't think you were qualified."

"Yeah," Emma snorted at that. "I might have lied on my resume. Thing is, he thought I was the exception to the bounty hunter rule, someone'd reformed out of jail and dedicated her life to justice and hauling in assholes to make the world a better place, but the truth is, I only did the job for a year and I only took it to avoid going back to jail after basically being a fugitive for a decade - and for the money to have a nice apartment. I had fuck dates with assholes who were just like the ones I hauled in for the cash, who cheated on their wives, who didn't pay their child support, who had records of restraining orders and assault."

While Ruby looked at her in shock and a flicker of dismay, Emma gestured to her standard outfit of jeans, white top, red jacket and leather boots and muttered, "This is as big a lie as those booty shorts and crop tops you used to wear. It's just... an act adopted from someone I got killed doing something selfish and stupid that I convinced made me strong, that it was some kind of armor or whatever to honor her dying and never getting to meet her kid that she gave up, but it's just my usual being an asshole and the world would probably be a better place if I was the one who'd died that night and she got to meet her daughter. I'm no Savior. And I sure as shit shouldn't be anyone's Sheriff."

She handed the badge to Ruby.

"I... I don't..." Ruby stammered.

"You were basically the Sheriff of my parents' kingdom. You deserve to do something you're good at. And there are a lot of people here who deserve to have someone who's good at protecting them and can put them first. That someone's not me."

Walking back to the Suburban, Emma felt slightly lighter. The Sheriff thing, to be honest, had always nagged at her from day one. Being a deputy had been marginally fun, because it was mostly fucking around while Graham did all the real work - while being half worried he'd find out she was an amateur hack who'd only done the bail bonds thing to stay out of jail herself. But then she was Sheriff, she was up against Regina, she was actually fighting for something that would have made Graham - and Cleo - proud. That brief attempt at redemption and being a good person had made her feel more alive than she ever had, but like Regina's shortly after, it had failed pretty miserably, an illusion of being good while still being an asshole. Henry had been right to run away and try to destroy magic (both times), but the rest of them were such addicts, including her parents who'd only used it by proxy to clean up their messes.

If she succeeded in this, magic would be gone from this world forever. Maybe it would be gone in that other world too. Either way, people would have a chance to not just try miserably and fail at being better people than they were written - or edited by some hack or hormonal teen - to be, but to actually succeed and have real _deserved_ happy (or not) endings.

Emma knew she was doing a pretty shitty job, though. So maybe giving up the Sheriff thing was the first positive step she could make, stop living that lie that she was a hero who deserved to protect everyone even in that mundane way. She wasn't. She didn't. Regina had been 100% right with her accusations those first few months she was in Storybrooke. It had to be her love for Henry - messed up as _that_ was - that had ultimately kept her from revealing to the kid that Emma had been a criminal loser until the age of 27 and only became a bounty hunter in a plea bargain deal with a too-generous DA who'd basically indentured her to Cleo's company for a year.

That douchebag who'd spilled wine on her dress might well have been her last job. It had been on her mind to leave Boston, her record clean, and do... whatever. She'd only returned to it in NYC because Regina had written her memories differently, had her become a bounty hunter when Henry was still a baby. Regina had made her a better person than she really was for Henry, and that was both amazing and fucking depressing - because it meant maybe that mass murderer had grown more than she had and that Henry's fake notions about her being a hero all her life had been reinforced by Regina's good intentions - so the truth was only going to hurt more.

Hurt like her back that was killing her from sleeping in a car. How had she done that on a regular basis not so long ago?

 _If only August wasn't back living in that trailer_.

The windshield was littered with soggy carry-out menus and... a parking ticket. Which could only have been issued by her father whose suspension had ended a few days ago, mostly because she felt bad about what she'd said after Neal's rant, even if she wasn't sorry for saying it, because it was all true.

But, seriously, a parking ticket!?

 _This is just an excuse to get me to talk to them!_

And it was going to work, Emma grudgingly conceded as she stomped down the street, through the atrium, up the stairs, and knocked on the door.

"I know you're in there! I can hear music!" she called out.

When still no one answered, Emma let herself in. The stereo was on playing some sort of classical baroque waltz, the stuff people listened to in The Enchanted Forest that made her want to fill her ears with concrete.

She knew in their hearts they wanted to go back to their home, they always had - enough to make that executive magic bean field decision without consulting even _her_ until it was a done deal. If her father could get away with it, he'd probably ride around town on a horse threatening people with this sword while her mother would spend all her time organizing fancy balls at the Town Hall to be followed a week later by weddings between virtual strangers who met at those balls.

"You'd better not be hiding!" Emma exclaimed. "I got your stupid seventy-five dollar invitation!"

There were cookies on the counter, and she snagged one, taking note of the dishes soaking in the sink. The truth was, she kind of missed this place, but the apartment she missed was from her first couple of months when it was just her and her roommie making dinner together - she mostly just chopped stuff after breaking the oven - and watching Netflix. She'd never had a roommate before, had always been a loner, and it had been a surprisingly nice change to have someone she could confide in and who confided in her - but who also kept secret stuff that would complicate Emma's life and didn't meddle in her own personal business.

Unfortunately, that new experience that had started her emerging from her antisocial shell had been shut down after only four and a half months thanks to Henry and that apple turnover. Then she got a mother who never had time to just hang out, because when she wasn't making up for lost time with her husband she was sticking her nose in Emma's private personal stuff and giving condescending advice while never sharing any of her own life that didn't fall under the "I am a perfect hero in amazing true love and I am going to repeat it ad nauseum until you stop being a disappointment and emulate my perfect princess hero-ness" heading.

Realistically, Emma knew her mother didn't consider her a disappointment as a person and was proud of how she'd coped given the circumstances of her life, but it couldn't erase the truth of her words in the Echo Caves or that she had in Neverland and more than once since chosen "true love" over her children... until Emma had started doing that too. It was such a shitty example, and it made Emma angry that her parents had always put themselves first, even when they tried to make it look like they were putting her and her brother first. They were hypocrites of the highest order.

But so was she.

The apple hadn't fallen far from that poisonous tree.

Trying to make them proud of her by emulating their true love example with the shitty materials she'd been given and a track-record of bad romances, going for the old easy stand-bye of her asshole emotionally abusive douchebag type had left her even emptier inside... but she's been so empty already it had been hard to really tell the difference and she'd let passion mask that pain.

Now she didn't have that passion and it _hurt_.

Emma was so tired of feeling empty.

Whatever Metatron had done with that 'spark', it hadn't really made her feel whole even if it supposedly re-balanced her magic. She supposed as she climbed the stairs to her old room, that being damaged before birth wasn't the sort of thing that could really be fixed thirty-odd years plus another timeline later.

"You'd better not be defiling my bed!" she called out before reaching the landing.

Peering in her old room, Emma found it empty. The bed had been moved to the corner to make room for her brother's currently empty crib and large piles of toys that made her both envious and disgusted.

The truth was, she _hated_ nurseries. Always had. Maybe it was something subconscious from when she was hours old imprinted by magic. Maybe it was the anger and pain she felt after being sent away by her first foster parents from the warmth of that nursery to the cold, sterile one in the group home with its broken hand-me-down toys and older kids who made her cry.

Her hatred had increased after seeing her own in the Enchanted Forest. Enough that even in her fake memories of raising Henry, he'd never really had one, which probably wasn't fair to the kid after the obvious care Regina had put into giving him at least material possessions.

Of course, she was also dirt poor and living out her car in the beginning before she became a bounty hunter ten years early so she couldn't have afforded a nursery for Henry until he was too old for one.

She'd tried to get over her quasi-phobia by helping with this place, making it a distraction from Neal's death. But then her parents went and named her brother after him and she ended up in The Underworld where her new, if creepy from the start, house had been replicated with the remnants of her hated nursery.

Her personal Hell was her own nursery, filled with reminders of what a mess she was and _why_.

Then there was her daughter...

Emma had been trying not to think about her since all this happened. She hadn't wanted another child. She'd only gotten pregnant to appease her mother and for Killian. But even then she'd orchestrated a ruse to accelerate the pregnancy so she wouldn't have to go through nine months of that again, carrying and hating her unborn child.

It was different sort of hate with her daughter, though. Her son she had hated because she couldn't keep him and that was so unfair when she finally had family. Her daughter she hated because she couldn't give her up, because her existence meant she was irrevocably trapped, tied even further to a man who didn't know how to love, who treated her so badly.

Life would have been so much easier if she'd realized what a delusion she'd fallen into before it was written into that damn book how happy they all were.

The truth was, she'd considered cursing her own child the more apparent it became that the girl was a budding psychopath who made Zelena look sane.

Of course her daughter would grow up to rape her brother while her husband seduced her son's wife and fathered her own not-really grandchild who led to her own death.

She'd been such a _fucking idiot_. She'd ruined so many lives. This was supposed to be her chance to fix them, but fixing herself seemed the even harder, perhaps impossible task.

Emma let out a deep sigh as she headed back down the stairs. She really couldn't take another round of hollow apologies from her parents. They were her parents, so she loved them and she wanted to make them proud, but she disliked them a great deal of the time... a dynamic that she supposed wasn't really unusual, accept that her parents were famous heroes who pushed her into the bed of a trophy-wearing murderer who'd spent three centuries getting women drunk to rape them in the bed they shared their wedding night - which was also the same bed that he'd shared with her son's grandmother for seven years, the bed that apparently her son's father, as a boy, had even napped in when fleeing the cruel intentions of Smee in the crew quarters before Hook handed him over to his child-abusing grandfather for spite.

She was a sick _sick_ individual!

And her life was a string of lies going back to the start, full of false hope, and that was the worst kind.

"Stupid hope," Emma grumbled, noticing with disgust that the _Once Upon A Time_ book was laying open on their bed to their story. At least it was the _right story_ and not changed to include her bullshit romance, but it was still a lot of bullshit in the original.

On impulse, she conjured a fireball-

A loud splash and a yelp delayed that plan, and Emma rushed in the direction of the bathroom. She wasn't a big fan of her brother, but if he drown in the bath because her mother slipped on a bath toy and cracked her head open - which was just the sort of thing Snow White would do...

The bathroom door was half open and Emma pushed it the rest of the way, ready to magically intervene.

But there was no need for intervention, and instead Emma screamed in abject horror at the site before her that had nothing to do with her brother and everything to do with bath toys being used in a very inappropriate way.

"OH MY GOD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MR. QUACKINGTON!?"

Emma turned away, shielding her eyes from the unnatural sight and somehow managed to reach the front door and stumble down the stairs without falling and breaking her neck. She felt dizzy and sick at the image imprinted in her brain, and then others started swirling into focus that were even worse.

She threw up in the azaleas out front and then ran down the sidewalk, not even sure where she as going, _just that she had to get away!_

* * *

AN: Did you get the Tinkerbell joke? JMo and Rose McIver are roomies in Vancouver. Yes, Snowing has a kinky side. But, of course, it involves terrible parenting. This chapter obviously referenced "Firebird" and how it recton destroyed Emma further as a character, turning her into always a jerk who didn't really care when she got people killed and used lame-ass honorifics to feel better about it just like her dumbfuck parents. What happened to Cleo was awful. Emma basically impersonating her down to her clothes and her walk was creepy and disrespectful and utterly destroys any badass cred Emma had in the pilot. It made her look like a fraud, a criminal who just found a way to get out of jail and beat up people without any consequences - like a great many bounty hunters, and the reason it's illegal in some states. It was simply a way to make her more of a selfish opportunist who deludes herself that she's a hero, just like Hook. It destroyed her even her past for CS. Just when you think OUAT can't reach a new low, they further vilified Emma while being totally clueless about it. And just when you thought THAT was as bad as it could get, Emma's going to full-on make-out with Hook at the funeral of the man who was murdered by the same woman who killed his wife and raped him, all three because of her fuck-ups involving her love for Hook. The toxicity of this ship is boundless!

Next up: Emma has a breakdown and The Gang tries to figure out the best course of action, but mostly they just trade insults.


	75. 02 Percent Opium Solution

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY**

 **.02 PERCENT OPIUM SOLUTION**

Neal was settling into a _Die Hard_ marathon and hoping the dimming lights didn't mean more lingering problems from the ice wall power outage when someone knocked rather urgently on his door. He was surprised to find Regina on the other side.

"Don't tell me Dr. Whale finally got the DNA test results and we're family for realsies?"

"No," Regina huffed with a glare. "And I'd almost managed to forget about that!"

Neal scratched the back of his neck and went to the next most-likely scenarios on his Regina-Mills-Middle-Of-The-Night-House-Calls list. "Right, so... Henry did something bad? Raised the dead? Kissed a girl?" It really was in that order. Sadly. His son had too much of his grandfather in him... though all things considered that was maybe better than having more of his mother in him. The undead could always be re-killed. You couldn't uncatch herpes.

"I should hope not the later or he'll be needing someone to raise him from the dead," Regina stated. "No, Emma has locked herself in the Library's elevator using magic. I had to leave a very important meeting to try and get her out. But I have been unable to unseal the door _or_ get into the elevator magically. She has some kind of barrier spell up," she huffed, "that your father thinks may be something she learned in that other timeline as the Dark One and is... I don't know... reinforced by that damned clock tower being the nexus point that anchored the Dark Curse to Storybrooke and begat it's creation... though considering that old weirdo brought magic here through the wishing well, he could be bullshitting just to sound important now that he has no magic," she harumphed.

Neal sighed. "I think the nexus thing is legit. He used it to anchor the Olympian Crystal to Storybrooke to... I dunno... take over the world or something in the other timeline. To be honest, I was still too pissed off at Zeus bringing Hook back from the dead _again_ to fuck my baby mama to pay attention to my old man's latest megalmanical scheme that made my martyrdom a useless crock of shit."

"That's nice," Regina absently replied, having tuned out everything after 'legit'. "Can we go now or do you need to change into something even more hobo-like?

"I dunno, can you change into something less anal-retentive-politician-pant-suit?" Neal countered as he grabbed his keys and joined her in the hallway. "What happened to that one t-shirt you owned that you wore that one time? Was that your pretending-to-like-comic-books-to-mind-fuck-Henry-into-unwriting-him-from-existence-so-I-can-get-laid costume? Or that just still in the laundry?"

Regina kicked him in the shin.

"Too soon?" Neal quipped. "I mean, I know you and Robin dated for all of a week based on a tat and fairy narcotics-"

"Keep talking, _person_ ," Regina threatened, "and I will transfigure you into a bound and gagged whore and leave you tied up on Hook's ship!"

"So... what you're saying is, it's a struggle not to give into your Evil Queen tendencies."

"Oh, don't think I didn't give in trying to blast open that door!" Regina told him on the way downstairs, then grudgingly admitted, "Yes, all right. It hasn't been easy. And everyone has been avoiding me. I expected the other parents to bring torches and pitchforks to Henry's PTA meeting."

"There was a PTA meeting?" Neal asked, surprised. "No one told me."

"Why would they?" scoffed Regina. "You've been in Henry's life for a matter of weeks. Besides, Emma didn't show up either. Not that she _ever_ has, even with all of her threats that I was a terrible mother and a sociopath. She's just like her mother. Who, incidentally, didn't show up _either,_ not that I'm surprised. Her students probably learn more on Facebook than whatever she teaches. Basketweaving or bird calls. Who the hell knows. At least Henry's science teacher was there, and at least he actually teaches science rather than astrology-based magical-creationist bullshit that the Forest Dwellers have been lobbying at every City Council meeting to make mandatory in school. They would never have even gotten a foot in the door if it wasn't for Snow's idiotic policies during her two weeks as mayor. Don't get me started on her 'fireside chats' that she and her dolt husband actually think means having a half dozen of their fealty-oathed followers bickering in her office at City Hall for an hour. Of course, their brains were rotting from syphilis, but American History is the fourth grade curriculum! What was she teaching Henry? That World War Two was just a big misunderstanding started by a misguided failed painter who just wanted to shoot everyone with kindness? I wanted the Curse to keep everyone complacent, not completely stupid."

"Yeah, well, you probably should have gone to more PTA meetings and fewer bullshit Council Meetings here to fuck Graham instead back when Henry was little," Neal informed with a shrug on the way out of the Inn.

Regina glowered. "Emma told you about that, did she?"

"My father, actually. Back when we were briefly talking to each other."

"He'll still upset about taking his magic, is he?" snorted Regina.

"A bit, yeah."

On the way down Main Street, Neal asked, "So... any idea why Emma magic-locked herself in the Library?"

"I don't know," admitted Regina. "Ordinarily, I'd blame you for that, but since you've been avoiding her all week and she's only now having a breakdown..."

"I haven't been avoiding her," Neal grumbled, hands in his pockets and avoiding a sparking streetlight, "I'm just giving her space. Emma has a lot of shit she needs to work out, and her constantly crapping on herself doesn't fix anything. Like you pretending you're making a difference when you're just making yourself feel better by cleaning up your messes. It's a reverse sort of narcissism. The more you hate on yourself for acting like an asshole, the better person you are. When the truth is, you're still just an asshole."

"Thanks for that pearl of wisdom," Regina scoffed. "Now talk your ex-girlfriend out before she causes another power outage."

Entering the Library, they found a small group had already gathered. Belle was looking through an elevator manual while Rumple sat a table tapping his cane on the floor and shooting dirty looks at Hook who was, again, eating Funyuns with his pointy-toed boots up on a table. Henry was playing Candy Crush on his phone and Ruby was using the computer at the circulation desk.

Neal walked over to Henry.

"Hey, buddy, how was school?"

"Dumb as always," Henry answered, not looking up. "Mom had a meeting with the other loser parents about making the subjects not suck as much."

"Clearly one of the subjects in need of improvement is English," griped Regina, taking his phone. "Your elocution was abysmal enough when you returned from New York, but it's become atrocious, Henry. Even worse than this person's," she scoffed at Neal who rolled his eyes.

Henry rolled his eyes too.

"Now you sound like Belle."

"I _never_ sound like Belle," Regina corrected.

"Is that supposed to be an insult?" Belle huffed at the pair.

Regina ignored them and asked Henry, "Did you talk to your mother?"

"She told me to 'go away'."

"At least she didn't tell him to fu-"

Regina turned the mouse Ruby was using into a real mouse which squeaked and ran away. "Language!"

"Hey, I was using that! And I'm the Sheriff!"

"You're the Sheriff?" Neal asked, confused. "I thought David's suspension was over?"

"It is, but Emma made me Sheriff. She resigned like an hour ago. Gave some speech about how she was a fraud who'd been lying to everyone and didn't deserve it."

"Wonderful," sighed Regina.

The power surged again.

"Maybe we should shut off the circuit breaker," considered Belle.

"Maybe we should break our way in without magic," said Hook.

"By all means, use your Swiss army hook," scoffed Regina. "You seem to have gotten it enchanted to cut anything. Accept your calorie intake."

"I am not fat!" Hook whined.

"You do have a bit of a gut there, mate," pointed Neal.

"It's not my fault!" whined Hook. "The grocery won't take doubloons, the Italian place got shut down when someone found out the veal parmesan was really made of stray dogs. And Granny only servers heart attacks on a plate!"

The lights flickered again and Ruby inquired, "How _is_ she doing that?"

"Magic, obviously," quipped Rumple, looking bored and annoyed as he twisted his cane with his palms like he was trying to start a fire in the linoleum.

"Yes, but _why_ now?" Regina wondered. "Unless I'm mistaken, the only time she had this sort of breakdown was when Ingrid manipulated her in that other timeline-"

"Most-likely using sympathetic magic with the memory stone as a harmonic device," nodded Rumple. "Emma essentially became a mirror of the younger version of herself whose wild magic was Ingrid's underlying motivation for her plot."

"But she's gone," Regina pointed out, "and the only other sorcerer here powerful enough, at least that I know of, is Maleficent who gave up her grudge against Emma and her family. And Lily wouldn't be capable of it without training which I don't believe Mal would do given her new 'love everyone' hippie mentality."

"Well, it's not like she needs some magical villain to be reduced to an emotional basketcase," shrugged Hook. "Swan's been teetering on the edge of a breakdown for awhile. I should know on account of just having had one."

"Yes, thanks for that, Captain Crunch," scoffed Regina. "We haven't forgotten that a large part of Emma's emotional and psychological instability is due to your genetic contribution _and_ banging your own great granddaughter into a state of self-loathing after screwing your own mother."

"I didn't know I was related to any of them! And _I_ didn't shag Swan, it was a bad copy of me spawned by Zelena's time spell and Swan buggering up her parents' meeting."

"You might not have actually shagged her, Hook, but you knew I was Henry's father. You banged my mother," Neal griped. "And then you went after Emma until she was so infatuated with you that she let me die in the damned woods without getting to see my son who now wants nothing to with me, cause I'm not a cool pirate like you! You're such an asshole!"

"Hey, I only glommed onto Emma because I felt guilty about not getting to make amends with you."

"You bro-hugged me in the hospital and we agreed everything was cool so you'd stop touching me and go away!" Neal reminded. "I died an hour later and an hour after that you were trying to bang Emma! So don't tell me it was all some misplaced guilt when you emotionally manipulated Emma into becoming a cuckolding bitch who dragged my son to fairy tale Hell and let him roam around on his own with serial killers to try and save you, you fat piece of pirate scum!"

"I am trying to change," Hook huffed. "Excuse me if I don't have an alternate personality to draw on as to how to be a better person! Excuse me if I felt I had a kindred connection with Swan that led to romantic feelings. How was I to know it stemmed from being blood kin and her going back in time and seducing me with rum and cleavage?"

"That's not the point!" Neal snapped.

"He's never going to get the point," sighed Regina, pinching the bridge of her nose. "His brain is too rotted from syphilis to understand the concept socially unacceptable behavior. And I'm beginning to think Emma's not in much better shape considering how quickly she apparently turned into a dumb skank in the other timeline. If Whale's experimental brain transplant hadn't turned Snow into a mass-murderer I'd sign Emma up for one... and I actually, since that one," she gestured to Hook, "is already a murderer who wears his victims rings as trophies, I can't see how any brain could make him worse."

"Not nice!" wined Hook.

"But not wrong," said Belle with a shrug. "As for Emma, honestly, she's always been a dumb skank, she's just gotten worse at hiding it. Like she told Ruby, she's a fraud. The rest of you are just too self-centered and distracted by her tight pants and blonde hair to have noticed sooner. I mean, she slept with a flying monkey! And then even worse, she was going to - and did in another reality - sleep with Hook."

"Hey, am not worse than a flying monkey!"

"Said flying monkey was a huxter not a murdering rapist, so worse," Belle directed at Hook who glared.

Belle continued, "She threw herself at Hook after Neal's funeral even though the creep sexually assaulted her on her doorstep and told her he was happy her heart was broken, implied so he still had a chance of getting in her pants. Emma's a shallow, horny idiot with terrible judgment who says she wants to be a better person and save us all, but all she's been doing since she got here, when not picking fights with Regina to pretend like she's badass and actually cares because she liked people thinking she was badass and caring about her - it's an orphan thing - is moping around like an emo teenager - also an orphan thing - and neglecting her actual emo teenage son as badly as her idiot parents have her brother - which I guess is Charming Family thing. We'd be better off if we gave her a memory potion and kicked her over the town line."

"She's The Savior," Henry pointed out, rolling his eyes. "Magic would just bring her back here somehow, probably after screwing us all over again."

"True," Regina agreed. "We can't just send her away because she's gone crazy. Never mind that her magic seems to work, at least somewhat, in the outside world, so it would be dangerous to send a mentally and magically unstable woman out there, even with faulty memories. She could hurt someone and not know why - and that could lead more people we don't want to this town."

"She's our problem," stated Rumple. "We have to deal with her."

"She's _your_ problem," Regina argued. "You made her your Curse loophole."

"No, I simply made use of a convenient get out of jail card provided by her parents and that wizard who let themselves get manipulated by a psychotic scribe. She's _The Charmings'_ problems. And conveniently, they're not here, once again displaying what terrible parents _they_ are."

"Got that right," snorted Ruby. "Their son probably thinks he has two dads named Grumpy and Sleepy. Last week they actually took him along to their hospital night shift."

"To be fair, Snow and David were out mass-murdering people," Hook reminded. "Better they left the brat with the Dwarves."

"Please, they're useless and incompetent," Regina argued. "They had more intelligence when they were Cursed than they do in their natural sheep-minded, Snow's-ass-kissing form."

"True," agreed Ruby. "Grumpy's all but given up on Nova. He just accepts that the Blue Fairy was right and Dwarves and Fairies shouldn't mix, that they can't possibly have true love for each other."

"Bigoted bitch," declared Hook.

"You're just upset they're nuns in a convent instead of whores in a brothel," Regina stated.

"Well, that too. There's not a single whorehouse in this town! It's unnatural! How's one supposed to shag in the back of these auto-car things? And the ally behind The Rabbit Hole smells like vomit and urine."

"So, like the hold of your ship," said Belle.

"That's not my fault. I had no idea my crew left it in a mess and then I was stuck in Cora's bubble for twenty-eight years. And I couldn't air it out while hiding from you lot. And then Prince Charming threw up all over the place on the way to Neverland!"

"Don't you find it weird," wondered Ruby, "that some people were actually better as their cursed selves? I mean, why is that? Sure, Snow turned into an insecure doormat, but she also genuinely cared about people unrelated to her and maintaining the well-being of children with constant vigilance and guidance rather than dumping them off on dark witches and random baby sitters to... I honestly don't know what she and Charming do when they regularly abandon their child and their jobs."

"Ride around in that truck looking for injured squirrels to nurse back to health, probably," said Regina and everyone sniggered.

"She did also sleep with Whale," Ruby remembered. "Of course, she was drunk, and to be honest, even being straight up gay, cursed to be straight, he was probably a better lay than David."

"Yeah, those two are _so_ boring!" agreed Hook.

"Totally," nodded Henry. "Missionary position on their dumb rose print sheets. They think it's kinky if they do it during the day."

Everyone looked at him in shock and he shrugged, "What? I walked in them with Emma last year. They were all giggly and whatever. There's steamier sex on network TV at eight o'clock."

"No TV for a month," Regina told him. "And I am bitch-slapping those two for letting my son walk in on them having their vanilla missionary sex."

She amended to Henry, "You are _not_ having sex with anyone until you are at least twenty-one! But when you do, do _not_ under any circumstance do anything those two idiots advise. I will not have my son's future true love forced to fake orgasms because of the advice of two fools who probably were raised taking abstinence pledges and believing babies were brought by storks until some servant had to explain it on their wedding night. I mean, Snow was literally five months pregnant before those two dimwits even realized she was knocked up again. I almost bitch-slapped her right then when she told me. Really? How shocking? You've only looked like you swallowed a soccer ball for a month already!"

"Oh, yeah, that was _stupid_ ," sniggered Ruby. "I mean, I totally smelled when she got preggers, but since they'd unfriended me after Emma broke the Curse, I was like, hell if I'm gonna tell them. I bet if Maleficent's magic tree never told them Snow was knocked up with Emma they'd have had like a _Blue Lagoon_ moment. What's happening to me, Charming!? It's huuuuuuuuurts! _Morons_. Even Ella has more parenting skills than those two, and she's like got an IQ barely above 'developmentally challenged' who makes those freaks on _Teen Mom_ look intelligent."

"Yes," interjected, Rumple, "we all know they are all utterly incompetant, but I say better the boy learn about sex from two blithering idiots than a rapist."

"Oh, right," nodded Ruby. "I forgot about your raping Graham for like forty years."

Henry sputtered, "You _raped_ Graham?"

Regina huffed. "Oh, it's not a big deal. He was a ruthless assassin who killed people for money and allowed the animals he hunted to suffer needlessly as he prayed to a false God over them to feel superior. I'm sure he derived some perverse pleasure from being my sex slave. And I like to thinking making him a lovable, if spineless, man who looked after you and cared genuinely for abandoned animals was a way of helping him see a better part of himself before he died."

"Before you killed him!" Henry exclaimed.

"Yeah, just because he drunk kissed Emma," nodded Ruby. "You are such a rapist, Regina."

"Well, at least I didn't maul my boyfriend to death!"

"Hey, that was Snow's fault!"

"Who's more the fool? The fool or the fool who follows them and then mauls their boyfriend to death?"

With a superior look of victory, Regina declared, "Enough of this!" She walked to the elevator's mirrored door and ordered loudly, "Come out of there this instant, Miss Swan!"

"FUCK OFF, RAPIST!" Emma shouted back.

Hook mused, "You have to admit, it's rather ironic that Cora was raped and both her _daughters_ turned out to be rapists. Am I right?"

Regina stalked over and magically Vader slammed his chair back into the wall, pinning him by the throat while hissing, "I may have made a ruthless killer my sex slave... and then killed him, and then used magic to pair people up with partners they never would have slept with otherwise, but at least they were without their memories and enjoyed it. You've raped _hundreds_ of innocent women and you still pretend it was the art of wine and seduction and all of their groggy cries of 'no, please stop' were playing hard to get, when all you were doing was getting them blackout drunk and sticking your diseased cock inside them to feel like you were still a strong, virile man rather than the pathetic, impotent bitch of a teenage boy."

She let Hook go then, leaving him coughing and wheezing. Finally he sputtered out, "You're mean!"

"Regina's mean. The sky is blue. The Enchanted Forest's atmosphere is point zero two percent opium," said Belle. "And for the record, you're both disgusting murdering rapists who should go to actual Hell because saying you're a good person now is not redemption, it's being a delusion disgusting murdering rapist who's just discovered being praised for sitting on your ass is an easier way to fuel your narcissism than cultivating fear through constant acts of violence. You both suck."

"Belle, I thought we were friends," Hook croaked out while rubbing his throat.

Belle rolled her eyes. "No, I was just pretending to be your friend so I could betray you and watch you cry like the little bitch we all know you are."

"You're even meaner than Regina!"

"And don't forget it, pirate slut!"

"Can we get back to Emma and her self-made magical prison?" sighed Ruby. "Before she fries the power grid and Hook has to eat all the food in the diner's freezer and turns into Jabba the Hutt?"

"I think you mean Pizza the Hutt," Belle corrected.

"Ha! True!"

"Stop body shaming me!" Hook cried. "And you dress like a stripper from the waist down, Belle! But it's not fooling anyone. We all know you're a boring, prudish nerd and loving books makes you a creepy, antisocial introvert who'll end up with a dozen cats.

"Look at Henry," Hook gestured to the unarguably antisocial, friendless teen. "He was a cool video game playing brat with tons of friends when he forgot about books, then he came back here and he's right back to being a friendless loser whose only escape was to embrace his loser-ness with that quill, but he broke it, which I respect, because who'd want _that_ shitty destiny? But now he doesn't even have some lame-arse magical device to pretend he's important."

"Fuck you, _mate_!" Henry growled at the pirate and stalked out of the Library in a moody huff.

"Well, thank you for that," groaned Regina, glaring at both Ruby and Hook. "I am trying to maintain some level of authority in this relationship since he has lost all respect for his birth parents. Did you really have to point out Henry's hero inferiority complex too? Now he'll probably fall down a mine shaft again. I thought you were going to therapy? Have you learned nothing?"

Hook shrugged. "Archie's a good chap, but I'm more of the Dr. Phil approach."

"You're going to therapy with Archie? Didn't you torture him?" asked Ruby.

"I let him punch me a couple of times to make it even," shrugged Hook. "He's kind of a pansy. Didn't even need an ice pack."

"Wonderful," interjected Rumple. "Since we seem to have given up on the matter of the dimwitted blonde locked in the elevator to bicker over pointless trivialities-"

"I don't think Henry's emotional problems or the disturbing number of murderers and rapists in this family are pointless trivialities, Papa," said Neal.

"Yes, well, you never had a teenager in your home, did you?" Rumple countered. "Now, since you all clearly care more about food and sex than your savior - and I can't say that I blame you - I am going home to have some soup, ice my ankle, and lament over the fact that all of you useless pinheads only call me when one of you has done something magically idiotic, even when I no longer have magic to fix your mess. How terribly pathetic that is. And then, hopefully, have sex with my wife!"

Rumple flipped them all off before limping out of the Library.

Everyone looked at Belle who signed and grumbled, "This is ridiculous!"

She banged on the door next. "Emma, open up this instant!"

"NO!"

"Stop acting like a child!"

"STOP ACTING LIKE A STOCKHOLM SYNDROME VICTIM!"

Regina and Ruby both snorted at that but Belle got huffy. "Excuse me?" she snapped at the locked door. "Stockholm Syndrome is more than the victim being captive. The person changes their beliefs and morals based on what the captors are. I never did that, _but you did_. If anything Rumple has changed his beliefs and the way he does things for me. Stockholm sufferers are willing to risk those that would rescue them in favor of their captor. I never did that. But you? They become dependent on their captor, life revolves around them. I have attempted to move on when necessary. I have not defined myself by Rumple.. I have constantly put him in his place and disagreed with his methods.

"But you? It hasn't even taken the events of an alternate timeline to have watched you make it all about Hook. The victim is irrational when it comes to protecting their captor. I protected Rumple but not in an irrational way. You went to extremes to lie, cover up, take away memories and blame your family all to protect a man who stalked you, emotionally manipulated you, and threatened to murder your entire family, and maliciously used your deepest insecurities to make you feel like trash until you became dependent on his praise to feel good about yourself. Rumple has never wished me dead, or made threats, or made me feel like garbage. But guess who fits that description? You and Captain Fatty McBalding over there. So take your pop-psychology bullshit and shove it up your high school dropout hypocritical heroic ass, bitch!"

Everyone gave Belle a rather shocked look. Hook had dropped his Funyuns and even Ruby exclaimed, "Daaaaaaaaaaaamn."

Just before the power went out.

"Oh, great job!" groaned Regina. She peered out the window. "At least it's not the whole block... or town."

Belle grimaced. "I'm sorry. I'm just sick and tired of people saying I have Stockholm Syndrome when it's the lot of you," she gestured to them, "who act like you've been brainwashed! My marriage might not be perfectly healthy, but we emotionally abuse each other equally and without malicious intent. Is it wrong that Rumple lied about the dagger? Yes. But I had stabbed him in the neck with it. And both of those actions came out of being insecure about our self-worth in this family that doesn't give a shit about us and wanting to protect each other from the magical harm you all bring upon us on a regular basis!"

"She's not wrong," agreed Ruby. "Emma said you all left her pregnant under a sleeping curse trapped in The Underworld. Like you literally didn't even remember that Zelena had brought her there she was so unimportant. You barely even remembered Robin and his daughter were there, apparently. Or Henry. He just wandered around with serial killers and stuff while you guys were fangirling over Emma creaming her panties for Captain Fatty McBalding."

"Stop calling me that!" Hook huffed.

"It's a good name for you," said Belle.

"Yeah, well at least I had a woman creaming her panties over me instead of wetting her panties!"

Belle's eyes widened and she glared at Henry.

"I didn't mean to tell him, but I was kinda high."

Regina punched Neal in the arm. "I still can't believe you got my son high!"

"I was protecting him from a damned curse!"

"Hold on," Ruby interjected and asked Belle, "when did you pee yourself?"

"When do you think!? When you chaining me up and forget about me!"

Ruby rolled her eyes. "Not that again..."

"Yes, _that_ again!"

"Hold up, chains? Kinky!" swooned Hook.

"FUCK OFF, FATTY MCBALDING!" both women snapped.

"Meanies!"

"Can we get the power back on, please!?" griped Regina.

"I got it," sighed Neal.

"I'm coming too," Ruby declared, glaring at Belle.

"At least take the pirate," Regina suggested. "Maybe he'll get electrocuted!"

* * *

AN: Neal's 'pearl of wisdom' about reverse narcissism is taken from a Bill Maher quote about PC white people: "You're pretending you're making a difference when you're just making yourself feel better... Constantly crapping on yourself doesn't fix anything. It's a reverse sort of narcissism. The more you hate on your own whiteness the better person you are." The Stockholm Syndrome bit is from rumples-leather-emporium on tumblr. And the opium bit is from _The Magicians_.

Next up: More high jinx trying to get Emma out of the elevator.


	76. No Toto Homo

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE**

 **NO TOTO HOMO**

"So..." said Ruby on the way up the clock tower stairs, "I've been thinking I might be gay."

Neal groaned. "Jesus, am I like some sort of gay epiphany guy here or something?"

"What?"

"Nothing," he sighed and shined his flashlight beam around the cobweb infested wood beams. "Good for you."

"It's just... there doesn't seem to be anyone else gay in this whole freak'n town!" Ruby complained. "I think I missed my chance with Elsa. She seemed pretty nice for the like five minutes we knew each other. I almost said something, but then it kinda looked like maybe she had something going with Emma, so I wasn't sure and now it's too late."

"I'm sure there's someone here," Neal reassured. "Just avoid Tinkerbell. She's pan-sexul. No pun intended. And probably got crabs... and lots of other skanky tropical diseases from this one slutty mermaid she used to bang during King Tides."

"Oh, yeah," Hook cut in. "I remember that. Kinky. Used to watch for hours. You and Tink would make a hot couple, luv."

"No one deserves to be with Tink. She's a mental drug-addicted kleptomaniac," Neal argued. "Ruby would be better off with Mulan."

"But she's so boooooooooring, Neal," Hook complained. "And she _never_ takes her clothes off. I think she showers in full armor!"

"At least she showers," Neal countered.

"Hey, I shower!"

"Yeah, you take all the hot water at Granny's. You can't make up for three centuries of not showering. Your BO is an entity unto itself like Pan's Shadow."

"I do not have BO!"

"You kinda do," Ruby cut in. "I mean, if I wasn't a werewolf, the cologne would probably cover it, but I can totally detect the stench of BO under all that man perfume."

"It's very masculine!"

"The man perfume or the BO?" joked Neal.

"Shut up! You dress like a hobo!"

"He's got you there," agreed Ruby.

"I'm practically broke! I grew up in this world, not some fucking fairy tale realm where cool leather outfits grow on trees!"

"Cows, crocodiles, and dragons technically," said Hook.

Neal punched him in the arm.

"Owe!"

"Better dressing like a hobo than a skanky stripper in a bad Jack Sparrow costume."

"I am far more handsome and less skanky than Jack Sparrow! And a far more functional alcoholic! _And_ I succeeded in gaining the affection of the Swan woman in my story!"

"Yeah, but she was your blood kin," Ruby said, "so that's not romantic, it's incest."

"I only kissed her once! Technically, she kissed me! And I can't help having erotic dreams about her when I saw her in a wet tanktop!"

"Well, he has a point there," Ruby conceded. "I saw her in a bra once. Spied on her while she was doing her laundry at the Inn. Whoooooooo boy, those abs! Let's just say I didn't have to bang some mimbo that night!"

"Great," groaned Neal, "has anyone in this town not masturbated to Emma fantasies?"

"Well, hopefully not her parents or son. That'd be gross, mate," said Hook, then amended, "Then again, her parents didn't know they were her parents at first, so I bet Charming at least had a wet dream about her!"

"And Mary Margaret totally could have too," agreed Ruby, "What with being all sexually repressed, the sleeping with Whale, living with a woman who wore see-through tops with hot black bras and painted-on jeggings..."

"Oh, my god, will you both stop!?" Neal cried.

"Hey, you're the one who doesn't want to shag her when she's willing, mate."

"She's only willing because she's an emotional basketcast, Hook. Taking advantage of that is _wrong_."

"You say 'wrong' I say 'romantic'."

"You're seriously like a sexual predator," Ruby told him.

"And you're an actual predator who ate her lover!"

"Yes, I am, so can we get back to _my_ relationship woes?" Ruby barked at them both. "Now tell me more about this Mulan."

"Well," shrugged Neal, "I'm pretty sure she's the only one hundred percent gay woman in The Enchanted Forest. Seems like every realm is allowed only one for some reason. But, yeah, she's as gay as they come."

"I'll second that," nodded Hook. "She didn't even bat an eye in my direction. Even Emma was giving me come-hither looks minutes after she pulled me out of a pile of corpses and then realized I'd helped murder all those innocent people, such is the power of my masculinity!"

"Gross," both Neal and Ruby told him.

Neal continued, "The rest are like... eighty/twenty and always end up dumping her for some other woman who always dies the token lesbian death so they can end up with their real true love and have babies. I think it's Lucifer's way of wanting people to think God hates gay people and invented bisexual people just to fuck with them."

"That's rather clever," mused Hook.

"That's horrible!" Ruby exclaimed.

"Yeah, that too. But, anyway, Mulan's in the Enchanted Forest still pining for Aurora-"

"She was in love with Aurora?" asked Ruby.

"It's a long and complicated story," said Hook.

Neal rolled his eyes. "Mulan helped Philip find Aurora. Philip broke her sleeping curse with true love's kiss. The Wraith my father summoned and Emma sent through that magical hat sucked out his soul. Mulan and Aurora went on a quest to find his soul. In between that you," he glared at Hook, "ripped out Aurora's heart so Cora could use it as a walkie-talkie and you then left them, Emma, and her mother all to starve to death in a dungeon. They used squid ink to get out. You returned obviously bisexual Aurora's heart to pretend like you were chivalrous to try and get Emma's attention before making rape threats at her that you thought were romantic and for some creepy reason she found romantic. You all went through a portal. Mulan and Aurora found Philip's soul. Philip got Aurora pregnant. Mulan was friendzoned and tried to make it work with the Merry Men, but they're smelly assholes so instead she went off on her own again."

"Fine, not that complicated," grumbled Hook. "But Aurora is dead now. So Mulan can move on the moment she finds out, as is the perfectly normal way for love to work. I'm sure a magical tornado or unicorn queef will bring her here eventually. Or you can use that shriveled testicle wand to make a portal to Arendelle, show up wearing nothing but that red cloak, and Elsa will shag you senseless on the throne and make you co-queen."

Ruby scowled at him. "While I appreciate that attempt at a romantic pep-talk, Hook, that is not how love is supposed to work! Can you guys stop turning my sexual self-discovery into girl-on-girl porn?"

"It's the only manner in which that sort of thing is acceptable in our world, luv," shrugged Hook. "Two hot ladies getting it on in a brothel for a lonely sailor's pleasure..."

Neal countered, "Or two lonely sailors on a ship stranded in the Never Sea..."

"Shut up! I was drunk and Smee was dressed like a woman!"

"So were you," Neal snorted.

"We were trying to sneak into Pan's camp, all right!"

"Dressed as women on an island with no women?"

"I didn't say it was a good plan! We came up with it when we were drunk!"

"God, you are such an idiot," muttered Ruby and she flipped the circuit breaker several times, restoring the lights.

"Brilliant!" cheered Hook. "Now I can use the magic box in Belle's apartment to heat up my grilled cheese."

"Ugh, why are you still alive? You're like a cockroach!"

"Well, you've certainly got the cock part right-"

"As in, you're a massive dick who turns everything into sexual innuendo even when it makes zero sense and is directed at an eighty percent lesbian?" scoffed Neal.

"Plenty of women find it romantic! And you shouldn't ignore that twenty percent!"

"The paralytic drunk ones you raped probably disagree," said Ruby with an icy look.

"I'm not that person anymore!" Hook huffed. "I found love again and it changed me."

"You mean you found chimmichangas that you carry around in a garbage bag to compensate for leaning you made love to your own mother and it made you fat," Neal told him.

"I hate you."

"I hated you first."

"Everyone hates Hook. It's not a contest," Ruby interjected on the way to Belle's apartment. "Can we get back to me and my relationship problems? It's hard enough being a straight werewolf finding love here. But a gay one? It's no wonder Snow wanted to toss my ass back home."

Hook snorted. "You actually think that dimwitted bint is that observant? The doc said my hereditary syphilis rotted her brain to Swiss cheese. Or it did before she got it replaced by Cora's, anyway.

"Now, Cora, she was quite brilliant at discerning one's favored bed fellow. Used that insight to ruin more than a few royals in her schemes from what I understand, including one of Prince Henry's older brothers..."

"I know, you'd think she would be gay blinder than a bat at a Republican caucus," conceded Ruby, "but the IQ drop didn't really start until after she downed that forgetting potion, and before she crashed with the Dwarves she hid out with a couple of old secretly Lesbian spinner 'sisters'."

"My papa had a couple of those for 'aunts'," recalled Neal with a nod.

"Everyone and their cousin had a couple of those," said Hook who then amended, "Well, that or whore 'aunts'. I recall some wenches from the brothel where I shagged my mum who were getting right frisky that Liam said were sisters, which seemed rather odd as I'd not known sisters to behave in such a socially objectionable manner, but it was my first time in a brothel, as well as my first time getting drunk. Of course, I did shag my own mum..."

"Yeah, for all you know, it was a brothel that catered specially to incest-fetish perverts," Neal told him.

"How many times do I have to say _I didn't know_?" griped Hook. "And at least I'm not in love with a product of incest!"

"What, Emma?" groaned Neal. "She's a decedent of incest, not a product of incest. Probably at least fifty percent of the Enchanted Forest's population are through first cousin fucking at the least. And you're totally still in love with her. And she says she's not in love with you, but you two have this sick Jaime/Cersei thing going on."

"You kind of do," Ruby agreed who rolled her eyes as Hook used his apparently sporadically magnetic hook to retrieve a spare key hidden above Belle's door. "You apparently even had a kid that grew up to be a raping, murdering psychopath."

"That was the different more messed up version of me!" Hook complained. "Will all of you stop blaming me for breaking Swan! She's the one that buggered things up with that time portal and apparently made past me develop a drunken-hazed recurring dream infatuation with the very slutty act she was putting on to get my ship."

"He does have a point. Magical heroic plan fuck-ups seem to run in Snow's paternal line."

"Thank you!"

Hook let them in only to have a butcher knife fly at them, embedding itself in the wall of the hallway.

"BLOODY HELL!" Hook yelped. "And... _what happened to your face_!?"

"It's an avocado mask, idiot," Tinkerbell rolled her eyes. "Now, _get out_."

"But Belle said I could heat up my grilled cheese," Hook insisted, pulling the greasy brown paper bag out of his pocket.

"No she didn't. Now go back downstairs and get your idiot savior out of the elevator. I am not hauling a shit-ton of laundry and trash down the stairs."

"Can't you just wave your wand-"

"Do I look like I am in possession of a magic wand? Would I have this crap on my face if I could use magic to vanish the dark circles under my eyes from night shifts at Granny's?"

Neal tugged on Hook's sleeve. "Come on, man, it's not worth it."

He then noticed Ruby eyeing Tinkerbell's cleavage where her robe was gaping and shoved her toward the door as well. "For either of you!"

Back outside with the door slammed soundly behind them, both pirate and werewolf grumbled, "You're mean."

"And you're sluts with greasy food addictions."

"But Tink _is_ hot," sighed Ruby. "We could move in together, get a puppy, commiserate over our deadbeat families, maybe open our own magic shop slash tattoo parlor..."

"She has a pixie dust addiction," Neal reminded.

"Oh oh oh!" Hook squealed. "I know what you are, Ruby! You're a species reverse Willow!"

"Ah... I'm a tree?"

"No, idiot, the character on _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ ," Hook told her.

"Why are you watching _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_?"

"Because I want to understand Emma's pop-culture references, obviously."

"Not because you're gay for Spike?"

"No, but he has great fashion sense," said Hook. "Anyway, see, Willow was into this ginger werewolf musician in high school, but then the actor who played him wanted off the show so he could make a stop-motion animation show about chickens and nerds, so the writers had Willow fall in love with that wench Tara even though she'd never before shown any interest in the fairer sex, and after that Willow was full-on Lesbian as though she'd never been with a man and liked it. Even when Oz did reappear for a guest staring stint, they never addressed the possibility that Willow was bisexual or if she was straight up gay why she was clearly in love and in lust with him and had previously harbored a quite embarrassingly massive crush since childhood on her male best friend. Perhaps she was only into Oz because she was an ostracized loser and the only person who positively acknowledged her existence, including her parents who seemed to be even more neglectful than Emma's, was that loser boy Xander who, come to think of it, reminds me of you, Neal."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Neal told him, "but it's obviously an insult, so fuck you, man."

"So," scoffed Ruby, "what you're saying is, I either suffer from a deeply repressed psychological issue due to a messed up childhood with my only other companion besides Granny being a boy who had a crush on me... or I was straight and our love was true until Isaac decided to write me gay to torment me in a perpetual state of unrequited love?"

"Pretty much," nodded Hook.

"But that doesn't help me at all!"

"I miss Zelena," sighed Hook. "She was our Anya."

"She murdered me!" Neal growled.

"But she didn't bullshit. That's rare in our world, mate. And now Cruella's gone too!"

Ruby asked Neal, "Did I fall in love again in that other universe? Did I find true love?"

"Erm... kind of," Neal replied. "I mean, you were with Dorothy for a few years."

"As in 'Oz' Dorothy?"

"Yeah. You knew each other for like twelve hours, barely spoke, then Dorothy ditched you," he told Ruby, "and got herself cursed. Then twenty-four hours later you found your way to Oz with Zelena's sliver slippers and after the Snap Chat equivalent of a relationship you true love kissed her awake, after which, I think, Toto always held it against you, because that poor dog definitely loved her more than you. So I'm pretty sure it was intentional when Toto ran in front of a motorcycle and you died trying to save him. It turned out someone had stolen August's bike that he stole from Dorothy and she and August ended up getting together and ruled Oz with their creepy half-wooden children who could only exist because Oz has that sort of fucked up magic. But they did name their first born 'Ruby', so you had that backhanded compliment namesaking tradition going for you. Though, you had to share a funeral with Toto and to be honest, Dorothy's eulogy was mostly about her dog and then she hopped on August's wood to see if being with a man could cure of her grief."

"Fuck, I hate our world!" Ruby cried as the reached the staircase landing.

"Wait, how many flights have we gone down?" asked Neal. "This is taking way too long!"

"Bugger, Swan jinxed us!"

"More like Tinkerbell," he sighed, looking at his green-tinged hand. "You don't need a wand to wipe pixie dust snot on the hand rails."

" _Godamn_ that ex-fairy!" cursed Hook.

"But she's so dreeeeeaaaaaaaaamy!" sighed Ruby.

"Aye, I want to punch her in the face and then make sweet love to her in the arse," agreed Hook.

"Are you sure _you're_ not bi?" asked Ruby.

"I did spend three hundred years on a ship with a bunch of blokes and never arse-raped any of _them_ ," Hook pointed out.

"Yeah, but they're all like, fives at best," Ruby pointed out. "I wouldn't do any of them either."

"Would you do me?"

"Hell to the no. I got enough STD's from being a cursed slut without adding your antibiotic-resistent shit to the list. Plus, I'm gonna be like Willow now and forget I was ever into guys. You're all smelly assholes anyway. I want someone I can share a wardrobe with and talk about periods."

"Sure you're not on the rag now, luv?"

Ruby punched Hook in the face.

"Owwwwe! Bloody hell!" Hook croaked, the sniggered, "Bloody. Hehe."

"I will push you down these stairs, pirate slut!"

"I will use my hook to pull you down with me, werewolf slut!"

Suddenly the two flew together and started making out.

"Fucking pixie dust," grumbled Neal and he resisted the urge to slam their heads together like cartoon characters. But they were already so close together it wouldn't have worked anyway.

Thankfully, Emma's whacked out mojo trumped the pixie dust when the lights dimmed and popped again.

"Bugger," repeated Hook after pulling away from Ruby who looked disgusted, "did I just give a monologue about a bloody vampire TV show?"

"Never mind that. Did I just spill my previously closeted sexuality to a pirate slut and an emotionally dead robot and then make out with said pirate slut like our plane was going down!?" moaned Ruby.

"I am not a slut!"

"A robot, _seriousl_ y?"

They emerged back on the ground floor of the Library just as Snow came barreling through the front doors with Charming right behind her.

"It's about time!" Regina directed at them. "I texted you an hour ago!"

"I'm sorry. I dropped my phone in the bathtub!" Snow explained. "We've been looking all over for Emma. Then we ran into Belle and she said she'd magically locked herself in the elevator with dark magic."

"So _you're_ the reason for this then," Regina growled. "What did you do this time?"

"Nothing!"

"Well, not nothing..." muttered Charming.

Snow sighed and admitted, "Emma walked in on us... you know... in the bath."

"It's not our fault," groaned David. "She doesn't live there. We were having a romantic bubble bath. Wine. Some baked ziti."

"Ziti _is_ the most romantic of pastas," Hook nodded in approval.

"And seeing you two going at it would probably put most anyone in a catatonic state out of shear disbelief at how boring seeing two people having sex could be," snorted Regina. "But I know she walked in on you before and all she did was drink more than usual at your taco party."

"We are not boring!" Snow argued. "We were using sex toys!"

"Really now? Details!" Hook perked up.

"Where's a portal when you need one," groaned Neal.

"Look, it doesn't matter. Can we just talk to our daughter?" demanded David.

"Oh, by all means, make it worse," Regina declared.

Snow approached the door and knocked. "Emma, sweetie, can we-"

"GO AWAY, YOU TOY MOLESTING FREAKS!"

"Emma-" David tried.

"GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY!"

As she shouted the lights flickered again.

"I'll escort them out," said Ruby and narrowed her eyes at Snow. "We have to talk."

* * *

"Owe, Ruby, let go of my arm!" Snow whined as the werewolf hauled her out onto the sidewalk.

"No," Ruby retorted, "I want to know why you really tried to send me back to The Enchanted Forest? Did you know I was gay and think I'd actually have a better chance finding love in a feudal misogynist sausage-fest of a world where women are defined by how many babies they can pop out, or are you really that shitty of a friend?"

While David looked confused, Snow sputtered, "I... well... I saw the way you looked at me and-"

"You tried to toss me through a portal because my gay feelings for you made you uncomfortable!?"

"NO!"

Snow sighed. "I felt bad, okay? I was never going to reciprocate your feelings-"

"That doesn't give you the right to decide how I should get over them!" Ruby shouted. "You think you're being adorably sneaky for other people's own good because they'll have some self-realization, but all you do is throw people into dangerous situations where they get hurt learning what you could have just told them over coffee! But do you know how that turned out in that other timeline? I fell in love with some dyke from Kansas, married her two minutes later, and when I got killed trying to save her stupid mutt she married August. _Fucking Pinocchio_. And named their half-puppet spawn after me! And not even my _real_ name! I became a token lesbian sacrifice!"

"I'm sorry," Snow sniffed.

"I'm sorry I ever had a crush on you," Ruby retorted coldly. "I wasted years pining for you. I knew you'd never feel the same, but I at least thought you were a good friend who cared about me, who considered me family even. But you've kicked me to the curb too many times since marrying your prince, Snow, for me to believe anything you say is actual genuine sympathy and good intentions. It's no wonder Emma wants nothing to do with you. _Either_ of you," she huffed before stomping off toward the diner.

"We're horrible parents, Charming!" Snow burst into tears.

"I thought it was Jerry's," sighed David. "How the hell was I supposed to know our thirty year old daughter has a rubber ducky?"

* * *

"I have an idea," Regina uttered with a rather deviant look in her eyes as the lights continued to flicker.

"I have a bad feeling about this," groaned Hook.

"I THOUGHT I TAUGHT YOU BETTER THAN THIS!" Regina shouted through the door. "YOU'RE A PATHETIC WASTE OF MAGICAL SPACE IF YOU CAN'T EVEN KEEP YOUR SHIT TOGETHER OVER SOME STUPID TOY!"

The lights really flickered and with that same look, Regina flung her hands toward Neal, enveloping him in purple smoke and vanishing him.

Hook's brow raised. "Did you just-"

"Take advantage of a magical destabilization to transport your stepson into your great granddaughter's self-imposed prison?"

"Please don't remind me of either of those relations," Hook scoffed. "And how do you know he's in one piece?"

"Well, I don't hear any screaming, crying, or vomiting," shrugged the former Evil Queen.

"Fair point," the pirate conceded, unwrapping his grilled cheese.

Regina launched a fireball and turned it into a pile of ash.

"What the-"

"You need to go on a diet."

"You're mean!" sniffled Hook, slouching into a chair to wait for this latest drama to play out. "Want to play poker?"

"Fine," sighed Regina, conjuring a deck. "Follow the Queen."

* * *

AN: The _Buffy_ thing is so true, right? And I can see Hook watching it like Spike watched _Passions._ The chimmichangas are from _It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia_ when Mac was fat. 'Follow the Queen' is a 7-card stud poker game in which the wild card is designated to be the next exposed card after a queen is flipped. (What would you ship more, Ruby & Elsa or Ruby & Mulan? Or would you just want Emma to have a brief bisexual fling with the other blonde?)

Next up: Remember way back when Merlin hinted that he's the reason Emma's life went to shit so he deserved to die for being the catalyst for what brought about her self-destruction?


	77. Mr Quackington

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: This chapter contains spoilers for the Season 5 finale.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO**

 **MR. QUACKINGTON**

(flashback)

Little Emma ran out of the movie theater after being scared by the stranger usher. It was only when she reached the lobby that she realized the lady's billfold was still clutched her hands. She'd only meant to lift a few dollars and then put it back.

Panicky, Emma tried to decide what to do. She didn't have a ticket stub to get back in. Should she wait for the people to leave the movie and try to sneak the wallet back into the woman's purse? She could just leave it at the concessions stand or in the trash by the door...

"Hey, that's her!"

Emma turned. It was the lady.

 _Crap_.

She dropped the wallet and she ran.

She made it onto the sidewalk before another usher caught her and the lady snapped, "You filthy little street rat. I'm calling the police!"

"I'm sorry," Emma cried. "I just needed money for the bus. I didn't mean to take it all, I swear. Please, can't I just go home?"

"Sorry, Kid," the usher told her. "I know I didn't tear your ticket. You got two strikes."

* * *

Neal took a moment to assess his person after recorporealizing inside the elevator. That done, and with a mental note to make Regina pay somehow, he turned his attention to Emma sitting against the back wall with her legs pulled up to her chest and her face buried in her knees, crying.

"Regina was just trying to wind you up," he explained, startling Emma who quickly wiped at her eyes and nose with the sleeve of her sweeter, "to get me in here. Not sure if she was trying to be considerate in a sneaky and kinda cruel way or punish me for bringing up the we-might-be-related thing."

Emma sniffled, narrowed her eyes and waved her hand. Nothing happened.

Neal frowned. "Did you just try and poof me back out of here?"

"...no..."

"Yeah, you totally did!"

"Okay, so maybe I want to be alone!"

"Well, your magic doesn't seem to think so."

"Fuck magic," Emma grumbled.

"Yeah, I hear you there," agreed Neal. "You realize we're both gonna be stuck here until you calm down, right?"

"You'd better get comfortable then. Hope you peed before coming down to join in the Emma Swan Freak Show," Emma snarked.

"Well, the elevator is just a cage above like a hundred foot pit or something, so pretty sure disposing of bodily fluids aren't a problem," Neal pointed out and Emma just harumphed.

Neal sighed and sat down next to her. "What's going on, Em? You resigned as Sheriff?"

She shrugged. "Wasn't really my thing."

"I thought you enjoyed it," Neal countered, confused. "You liked protecting people, doing good. I mean, I get that things went a bit astray on account of your father and Hook-"

"I only took the job as an excuse to be near Henry, okay?" she snapped, cutting him off. "It was all a big act. Just like everything!"

"Everything?"

Emma huffed. "Yes, _everything_. The whole bullshit spell my mother had cast on me before I was born that made me the Savior, not cause I actually have any savior-like qualities! I was only even a bounty hunter for a year! A _year_ , Neal! I made fun of you having a shitty life in New York, but only because up until a year before Henry found me I was a pathetic loser on the run from a probation violation ever since I got out of jail.

"After I got out, I was supposed to check in with my probation officer," Emma explained, "but instead of ran off to Tallahassee stupidly hoping you'd be there and that it was all a big mistake. But you weren't, so I stayed until I almost got caught, then I never stayed anywhere more than a year."

Neal gave her a surprised and rather guilty look. "So what did you do?"

Shrugging, Emma answered, "Odd jobs, some petty theft if I couldn't get a legit job waiting tables or temping. Slept in the Bug a lot."

Frowning, she continued, "But I let Henry think I reformed right off, that I was a hero hauling in bad guys while I wasn't raising him. He was so sure I was a hero, someone special, so how could I break his heart and tell him that Regina was right, that I really was a criminal loser pretending to be a hero.? How could I tell him that I only became a bounty hunter as part of a deal to get out being thrown back in jail when I accidentally got a woman _killed_."

Sniffling, Emma held out her phone which had the obituary of her late frenemy with a picture. "I even started dressing like her, like it was a superhero costume, but I never earned it. I just stole it from an innocent woman who was trying to find her kid. And you know what? I thought I was doing some great thing by finding the girl and telling her that her mom was looking for her - but she was dead! She was crying and I bought a jacket at her shop. _Who does that_? I didn't even have the balls to tell her that it was _my fault_ her mom was dead, that she'd never get to know her. I just bought this fucking jacket and left!"

She pulled the jacket off and threw it on the elevator floor. "Then I got the chance Cleo never had and I ruined it so badly that Henry would have been better off if I'd died instead of you. Or Robin! You both died because of me!"

"Hey, it wasn't just you," Neal told her. "I died because of Zelena and my father. And Robin died here too when you had nothing to do with it."

"But I didn't save him either! I was in New York. And it _was_ my fault before. I let Hades out of The Underworld! I even had a drunken make-out session with a douchebag at his funeral," sighed Emma. "I mean, sure, Hook was miraculously back from the dead and according to Henry's book what everyone saw was just a beautiful moment between two lovers-"

"As opposed to a spirited bout of Skanko-Roman wrestling," Neal quipped. "Thanks for holding back and not fucking all over my headstone by the way."

"I was drunk, okay?"

"You know you're an alcoholic, right?"

"I think alcoholism is the least of my problems," Emma moped, "though it's just one more thing to add to the list of why Emma Swan is a _big fat loser impostor_."

"Naw, Hook is worse. He's way fatter and loser-er," Neal tried to cheer her up, but it didn't work.

"I know you think I'm a loser, Neal," Emma argued. "I'm a disappointment. And I'm an awful parent. I only ever paid attention to Henry when he was in danger... and even then only half the time. As soon as Hook showed up, I'd abandon him to go make out like the horny teenager _he_ was supposed to be. Just because I never let myself actually be a horny teenage slut when I was a teenager didn't give me the right to decide to be one at thirty because I had parents to annoy _when I had a son who depended on me_. I couldn't even be honest with him about who I was. Even _Regina_ came clean about all her shit - well, apart from the raping, but I can't really blame her for that, because how do you explain that to an eleven year old..."

"Yeah, not easily. Though after a year living in New York, Henry's probably pretty self-educated about a lot of stuff he wouldn't have learned until he was thirty here... if at all, so if anything, Pan's curse at least allowed him to grow up _normally_ for a year," Neal considered.

"Yeah, but he still grew up _normally_ as a dumbass who then was a _dumbass_ about magic," grumbled Emma. "And I couldn't even _tell him_ that he was being a dumbass and ground him until he was thirty because I'd just dragged him to Hell to save an alcoholic douchebag and I was putting on this badass act because I didn't want him to be embarrassed and disgusted by me, but he had to already be disgusted by me, because how could he not be after the shit I did as the Dark Swan and after that sent him running away to New York with his personality-challenged girlfriend."

"Never a fan of Violet, huh?"

"She did end up sleeping with my husband and the jury's still out on how consensual it was," huffed Emma. "Considering she ran off with Henry to New York to destroy magic, she obviously had shitty judgment!"

"Well, I can't disagree there."

Frowning, Emma asked, "Were you _really_ on a quest to destroy magic? I mean, I know you were trying to protect yourself from your father, but-"

"Naw. I mean, I did research a bit," Neal admitted, "but nothing as hardcore as what Henry got up to. He obviously misinterpreted what I said-"

"And thanks to that hoe whom I've always thought looked too much like Regina for it to be healthy," said Emma, "it all turned into a massive clusterfuck."

"Foolish teenage love does that. Destroying magic. Running to Hell for a drunk dbag pirate."

Emma smirked. "Thanks."

"You set yourself for that one, Em.

"Anyway, what was I saying?" Neal scratched his head, "right, destroying magic. Naw, it wasn't a master plan or anything. I didn't want anything to do with magic, but I did want some protection. Knew my old man would come looking because of you, so I figured I'd be prepared if I could be. I didn't know what would be coming for me, if it would be the demon I left, and I'd had a decade to lose sleep about it and imagine the worst."

"Considering you died, I'd say 'the worst' happened," sighed Emma. "If you'd succeeded..."

"Then what? It'd still have been a mess. All I'd have done is destroyed the magic that came from our world, not this one. It wouldn't have eliminated any real threats. And it wouldn't have guaranteed we'd get a second chance either. That's why I stopped looking, never made that appointment. You got to Storybrooke and I knew... I knew it was stupid to think I'd have a second chance with you. And who was I to decide to wipe out magic, anyway?"

"Someone smarter than almost everyone else in this family," sighed Emma. "You wouldn't have used a demonic drinking cup to destroy a divine phallic crystal. And getting rid of the magic your father brought here isn't a bad thing. It's basically part of what we're doing here, isn't it?"

"Well, that and destroying a shit-ton of dusty old books."

"Which we wouldn't be doing if I'd gotten things right last time," sighed Emma. "If I'd turned my life around after prison, got my GED, got a real job, actually... I don't know... _educated_ myself even a little. Which is maybe why I liked this act too much," she admitted. "I got to look badass smart and no one ever questioned it, but I didn't have to actually be smart, because no one else here is. I mean, next to my mom I look like a genius.

"Regina, your dad, Belle, they're only ones around here to seem to be remotely intelligent beyond magic and heraldry crap," Emma continued, "so I could look badass and still be a dumbass and no body would care that their savior acted like the idiot high school dropout she was. It's all about image with fairy tales. I got so caught up in trying to look the part, if I'd forgotten who I was playing a bounty hunter, I _really_ forgot being a savior and a princess. Not that there was anything to miss. I forgot the real me, the better me, a long time ago. Maybe not as long ago as Regina, but that good me is all the same just a small spec somewhere deep in my soul that I literally lost being a selfish dumbass. How can you possibly respect that?"

"I don't," Neal conceded, "but I also don't think you're a loser," he argued. "I just feel even more guilty I let August do that to you, honestly, that going to prison sucked the good potential out of you, left you to a life we were trying so hard to escape to be the good people we _both_ knew that we could and had always wanted to be. It just didn't occur to me that you'd try and find me after sending you the Bug-"

"And the money that you never actually did."

"And that," sighed Neal.

"Why didn't it occur to you?"

He shrugged and answered, "I guess I didn't think you loved me enough to still love me enough after that to want anything to do with me."

"I stole those watches for you," Emma argued. "We were going to run off together and start a life together. A _real_ life."

"I know. I guess I just have a history of people lying about how much I matter to them," Neal replied and concluded, "It was easy to fall back on that and assume you didn't love me as much as I loved you. You were always gonna be my one true love, Emma, but the way my life had gone... didn't seem likely I'd always be yours. And I wasn't."

"Because you left!" Emma snapped.

"And I came back, but you still didn't choose me," Neal reminded. "You didn't even try to be friends."

"Because you were a jerk with a fiancee at first! And because I was afraid of falling back in love with you! I'd never loved anyone that much and losing you hurt! Even after ten years it hurt!"

"I dunno," Neal argued. "You acted like you loved Hook a _hell_ of a lot more than you loved me, Emma. Love or 'in love', either way, I fell short. You never grieved me, Emma."

"I know," Emma conceded, dropping her head. "I don't think I could, not after starting in Neverland. That tore me up, and then you were back, so I didn't have to. And then you were gone and I knew I'd fall apart. I wouldn't be able to maintain the act I was so... invested in. Everyone would see who I really was: that blind-sided, brokenhearted girl whose happy ending had just been snatched away, who didn't have the first fucking clue how to deal with that."

"I'm sorry," Neal exhaled. "I'm sorry that I broke your heart, Emma."

"You broke _me_ too," Emma told him with a shake of her head. "I could never be the same person after that, not when the good person I was got used so badly. Or I _thought_ got used. Finding out the truth really sucked. Losing you again sucked even worse. Then I really couldn't ever be the good person I was back then. It hurt too much to be her again."

She snorted and amended, "But lucky me, I got my soul sucked out so then everything that happened before was numb and all I had was a weird soul-seeking-darkness-craving infatuation with Hook which just ruined me even more."

Emma slouched and kicked her legs out in front of her like a petulant child, crossing her arms before huffing, "Maybe I would have been able to find some... some better version of me, actually been able to become the hero Henry thought I was if you hadn't died instead of just pretending and failing and then not even trying to pretend anymore, because being an asshole was so much easier when everyone was there telling me what a good person I was and that I needed Hook to knock walls down and be a real woman until I just lost my identity and was basically a reflection of him with a vagina - and _Jesus_ , it all sounds like some nineteen sixties anti-feminist garbage from _Mad Men_! So I'm not just a bad savior, a bad daughter, and a bad mother, _I'm also a bad woman on top of it all_!"

Emma dropped her head back into her hands.

"Why didn't I _save_ you?" she cried. "Everything would have been so much different if I'd just been stronger! If I hadn't been so afraid of being me... or that it was too late to be that me... or I don't even know, just that you deserved _that_ Emma that day in the forest, not a selfish, scared, screwed up impostor who just left you there and then didn't even take the time to get you a properly engraved headstone."

She scoffed. "I should have used that serum of Jekyll's to suck out this selfish, jacket-armored bitch. Even if I couldn't have killed her, I'd have at least had to face that this part of me isn't a hero, isn't good, isn't even _nice_ , is just a costume that selfish criminal loser's been using to fake everyone out the same as all the other villains. And that _real_ me really is a scared, lonely orphan who's never strong enough to fight that. Regina did a better job of fighting her dark side and she's a mass-murdering rapist. And I couldn't even admit what a fraud I was when she told me I was good, that every day since getting to Storybrooke has been the extension of a lie stemming from guilt over getting an innocent woman killed. What does that say about the kind of savior I am?"

"That you're one who got really screwed up and never had the guidance you should have had?" Neal answered and shrugged. "I get thinking you're a loser and pretending you're okay, Emma. My life wasn't that great. I told you I could never get a good job either, never stayed in one place until the statute of limitations ran out. I kept trying to turn my life around, but it never worked running from the past. I came to the conclusion that I was cursed, that it was magic and the price I was paying. Til you got to Storybrooke, then Tamara showed up, and I thought maybe I'd succeeded in my part, maybe I was getting my chance."

"That worked out so well," snorted Emma.

"Yeah, think about it, though. If you'd made something of your life, if you'd done anything else but become a bounty hunter at that moment, trapping yourself in Boston to work off your debt, you wouldn't have been there for Henry to find you. Your motives were selfish, but they got you where you needed to be to find the selfless part of you again."

"A lot of good that did, though."

"Maybe in the longterm, but in the shortterm, you _did_ do good, Emma," Neal reminded. "I know you did. Don't tell me that good part of you didn't really want to help people and that it was _just_ for Henry."

"I did," Emma admitted, "but it all went sideways after I broke the Curse. I never had a chance to be honest with anyone, even if it ever did cross my mind. I got branded The Savior, the woman I was pretending to be to be a hero for Henry, who could stand up to the Evil Mayor. No one would have taken seriously a dork in glasses and flannel who ran away from her problems instead of facing them, who took the easy way out every time."

"Maybe not," Neal conceded. "Maybe Henry screwed it all up by taking the initiative and speeding things along before the Curse was supposed to be broken. Maybe you were supposed to eat that pastry and Henry was supposed to wake _you_ up."

"Or you," Emma told him. "Maybe that was supposed to get you here. Maybe that was supposed to be our true love happily ever after moment."

"Maybe, but that's not how it happened."

"No, it's not. Instead you died and I ended up with a thing for assholes."

Frowning, Emma amended, "You're the only not-asshole I loved, you know?"

"I guess that should make me feel special," quipped Neal.

"It _should_!" Emma insisted. "Every other guy I've been with has been a total creep. I mean, I didn't even really think about Graham _that_ way until he drunk threw a dart at my head and then drunk kissed me against my will. And Walsh acted like he thought I was a client who'd called with some ridiculous accusation about faulty furniture, so basically insulted me a lot, then took me out to dinner when he 'realized' that wasn't me and drunk kissed me. Hook physically assaulted me a lot, made rape jokes, and then drunk kissed me-"

"And I dragged you to a bar," Neal recalled. "That's kind of a messed up pattern, Emma. You seriously equate falling in love with assault and alcohol? When did that happen?"

"Who are you, Archie?" Emma huffed. "I don't know! Maybe that married asshole I dated when I tried being a nanny after realizing you weren't coming to Tallahassee! But I was really lonely and I wanted to know things still worked _down there_ and... it just... happened."

Emma glared. "Stop judging me!"

"I'm not-"

"That's your 'I am judging you' face, Neal!"

"Okay, fine, I'm judging you! I'm judging you as someone who got messed up before you were born and then had more chapters of crap piled on top of that until you got twisted into a shitload of emotional and psychological knots and don't even know who you are anymore.

"And that's _sad_ , Emma," he sighed. "It's seriously not good. You gotta work through all these hang-ups and defense mechanisms you acquired to survive and figure out who you are. Believe me, I know, it's hard. Saying you just got some walls that need tearing down is bullshit people who don't know anything about real suffering spout to feel like they get it and are being helpful. It's not about walls and it sure as shit is not healthy to have them torn down before you're ready just because some asshole who watches Dr. Phil thinks it's what you need."

"Hook does really like Dr. Phil," sniffled Emma.

"Well, he is bald and loved for being an asshole to people with serious emotional and psychological problems. I'm sure he gives Hook hope that even without his hair he can still have a fanbase."

Emma snorted. "Probably."

Neal let out a sigh before telling her, "Look, Em, magic fucked us both over, kept us from ever realizing our potential, ever being happy. Kept us fugitives from the law 'til it wanted us to settle down, be in the right place, you for Henry to find you, me for my old man to show up and finalize the whole reason for casting it in the first place. So maybe we coulda been better people, done great things, been heroes without magic. Maybe we both have it in us to be more than losers or pretenders, to be good parents. Magic kept us from ever being able to exercise that free will. Just means there's a lot of nasty habits to unlearn is all."

"I'd say it's more than a lot," Emma argued, "when they lead to an incestuous family orgy and an antichrist."

"You know, I'd have had money on my half-sibling being the antichrist and your second spawn as the runner up," mused Neal. "Didn't see it being your grandkid. I guess that exorcism meant it had to get transferred to someone, and who better than the descendant of two Dark Ones-"

"And two idiots pretending to be heroes whose bad advice led to the whole mess in the first place," sighed Emma. "I really don't like my parents."

"Yeah, not a fan of 'em either. Or mine. Or, really, any parents here, ourselves included. We suck."

"We really do."

Emma kicked at the elevator's cage door again and considered, "You know, even if what I did to get that potion was all a con, I still did it for love. That was my first and last act of legit true love."

"You kissed Henry awake."

"Out of guilt. Because I failed. Every act of true love I've done since has been out of guilt for hurting people, for not believing them, for messing with their lives. And every act of true love I haven't done has been out of fear of failure.

"I wish I could find you in the Echo Caves all over again," sighed Emma, "and tell you that I didn't really mean that I wanted you dead, that I was just scared because I'd never stopped loving you and I didn't know how to go through losing you again, not knowing you were never trying to hurt me, that you left me for love, that you wanted to be with me and be Henry's father. Facing that pain was the _one_ good piece of advice my mom gave me, and I should have listened... but I didn't. I pushed you away and I listened to all the fairy tale bullshit advice, crap that's probably half my fault my mom was even saying because of how I changed the past, changed my parents' story by inserting myself and Hook into it..."

"Maybe, but that didn't happen here," said Neal. "Means they could improve. Plus... the whole syphilis brain transplant pixie dust detox thing's gotta eventually have some positive gains you'd think."

"Hard to offset the mass-murder side-effect, though."

"True," conceded Neal.

Emma let out another sigh. "I really fucked up, Neal. I gave Hook your happy ending. I fought for him. Fought too hard because I didn't fight for you. I let him in when he didn't deserve it, because I pushed you away when you deserved to have a family. Because of me at least four parents, good people, didn't get to see their kids grow up. _And I'm sorry_ ," she apologized, crying again. "I'm sorry I keep helping the bad guys win, I'm sorry I keep giving up on the good guys. I don't even know why!"

Shaking her head, she lamented, "It was supposed to be us having those stupid magical adventures. It was supposed to be us watching Henry have his first kiss. We were supposed to get married, have more babies, watch them grow up and give us grandkids and have awesome jobs we loved and a house by the beach. I wanted that. A part of me always did and always mourned that it was never going to happen. I want to believe that's the only thing that kept my heart from turning entirely black - _that I did truly love you_... even if I realized it too late and had to keep it buried so deep in order to find happiness and love in life without you. Even if the rest of me had to change, even if I had to really become that badass jerk in a leather jacket to live that life, even if any part of Emma who loved you that was still left after Tallahassee had to die and be reborn as a morally corrupt asshole- that spark was still there."

"I think you always carry your first true love in your heart, that first person you want to spend the rest of your life with," Neal told her, "no matter what comes after. The others fade, but the first is something special, whether it lasts or not. You were mine, Emma."

"And you were mine and it was special, what we had," Emma agreed. "And it was so much more than all of this fairy tale bullshit, Neal. We were just _us_ , two messed up kids together against the world, not putting on any acts or airs or with crazy responsibilities. I think... I only ever really knew myself when I was with you, and that's what made me the most mad when I lost you."

Hanging her head, she explained, "I became such an awful person after you left me, then you came back and for a short while I remembered the person I used to be, that good person who didn't want to be a criminal, who only did bad things to get by. But then you were gone again, so I couldn't ever be her again, and I was so angry that you made me remember her _and_ that I had to become such a bitch to survive without you! So I had to forget you again, shove all that down, go back to being the bad boy's girlfriend, the selfish bitch who only cared about herself and didn't think about why she was that way, or I'd never be able to deal with it all - _with all of this_. And that just _destroyed_ me, everything good and special about me. I just became like everyone else here."

"So now you gotta _un_ become like them," Neal told her. "You gotta push back against this fake-ass story that says good people get punished and bad people get rewarded. That says true love is strangers eye-fucking. Magic's a mess and _this_ magic is gonna infect the magic of this world - already has started to - and then it's magical Armageddon all over again. You know the truth, Emma, you see through the lies now that no one else can."

"You see through them too."

"But I don't have magic. I'm not The Savior. I'm just a guy who dresses like a hobo."

"You really do. Seriously, you gotta do something about that," Emma sniffled.

Neal smirked. "Fine, I'll buy actual full-price clothes if you stop dressing like a dead woman _and forgive yourself_. You have to find a way or this is all for nothing. For whatever selfish reasons your parents cast that spell on you, they did try to save you when Regina cast the Curse.. They _did_ believe you'd grow up to save everyone. Maybe they didn't know what they really needed saving from, that it's something deeper and grander than a plot device, but they believed in you."

"And they also believed that true love," Emma snorted, "is supporting each other doing incredibly stupid things that hurt innocent people. They helped make me into the bad person I don't want to be."

"So don't be that person."

"I'm _trying_ ," Emma griped, "but I'm a mess, Neal! And this family of jerks isn't making it any easier! I mean, every time I try and make things right with my parents, they go and fuck it all up! Like _literally_ this time. They fucked me up even more by _fucking_. And who the hell uses a rubber ducky as a dildo! They ruined Mr. Quackington!"

"Mr. Quackington?" Neal lifted a brow. "Wait... that rubber ducky you insisted watch us have sex in that motel bathtub that time? You parents actually-"

Emma glowered. "It was a hotel with a fancy bath _and I turned him to look away_."

"Okay, okay! I know, I was joking!" Neal defended, remembering that he thought it was kind of adorable that she had brought a childhood toy to enjoy their stolen romantic bubble bath, and then she'd gotten on his case for not knowing who Burt and Ernie were.

"My father had Mr. Quackington's head up my mother's vagina and he was _squeaking_. SQUEAKING! It was _awful_ , Neal. It was bath toy abuse!"

"I'm never gonna be able to unsee that image," Neal winced.

" _You're_ never going to be able to unsee it!? I WAS THERE! I'll never be able to take a bath ever again!"

"Because you walked in on your parents banging with your childhood toy?" Neal questioned. "That's... extreme. I mean, I get it's gross and disturbing and you might have nightmares about it for awhile-"

"I was molested, okay!"

* * *

AN: The lines about Emma losing herself and becoming Hook are inspired by an _Inside Amy Schumer_ song in which a female lead sings about how her true love is defined by her losing her identity and turning into a reflection of her double - which he finds extremely hot and leads to them having sex.

Next up: Emma got molested...


	78. Emma Got Molested

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: This chapter contains spoilers for the Season 5 finale.  
**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE**

 **EMMA GOT MOLESTED**

"I was molested, okay!" Emma burst out, taking Neal by complete surprise.

He stared at her a moment, computing that. "You... as in...not with-"

"No, not with a rubber ducky!" Emma snapped and the lights flickered again. "Why the hell would I keep it if I was! That's Hook kinds of messed up!"

"Woa, okay, calm down," Neal tried, holding up his hands.

Emma slumped back against the cage and sighed in defeat. "Pastor Tim. He took in 'troubled' kids, and I'd gotten caught stealing so I was sent to live with him and his wife Alice.. Eventually, some kid in his Sunday School tattled and the cops came and found the pictures he took and they arrested him and Alice. She knew all about it and would make me take baths in ice water and hold me under and tell me that I was a pretty little blonde distraction who was filling him with Satan's desires and making him do those things."

"Isn't that basically what Dark Two Hook told you minus the Satan thing?" Neal recalled.

"Pretty much," Emma grumbled.

"So that's-"

"Hook kinds of messed up. I know!" Emma cried. "He wants to sleep with women who remind him of his mom and I fall for guys who sexually assault me because I got molested as a kid!"

She sniffed, adding, "Which is probably also why I fucked that prison guard, which probably just messed me up worse."

"Wait, you-"

"He was smuggling in contraband for a price," Emma explained, "and I had a lot of weird cravings. It was mostly just blowjobs, but it turned out he kind of had a thing for the pregnant inmates, and I was lonely and hormonal and this one time he cornered me in the Laundry-"

"Jesus, Emma-"

"It's not like I didn't want it! I had a lot of, you know, sex dreams, Not about him. More like weird stuff with Kermit the Frog and Barnie the Dinosaur, but they weren't there, and I knew I wouldn't get my Lucky Charms if, well, I didn't give him mine, and it wasn't... it wasn't that bad all things considered."

"Emma," Neal groaned at her seriously weak justification, "the guy was in a position of power. He was basically extorting prisoners for sex. If you refused he'd have probably had your cell searched after planting drugs. Whether you were sexually frustrated or not, that's sexual abuse at best, rape at worst."

"Says the guy who banged a seventeen year old girl," Emma reminded.

"You told me your were eighteen and you had a very good fake ID," Neal reminded right back, then ran a hand through his hair and sighed, "Jesus. Did you actually want to sleep with me or did you just think you owed me?"

"Well, you did let me stay in the Bug and taught me how to be a better criminal, and you were really nice. I mean, you never tried to force yourself on me, so-"

"JESUS!" Neal repeated and groaned. "I think I'm gonna be sick!"

" _But that's not why I slept with you_!" Emma exclaimed. "I mean, at first it's why I considered sleeping with you. I was worried that you'd kick me out if I didn't, but then I tried to give you a hand-job that time and you told me you didn't expect anything, that you liked me as a friend and a partner. So when I did sleep with you it was because I really wanted to because I loved you and wanted to be with you."

Emma sighed miserably and considered, "I guess you're the only person I ever slept with and it wasn't partially out of guilt or fear or feeling like I owed them."

Neal grimaced, though he was relieved that he wasn't actually a rapist. "Have you ever told anyone about any of this?"

"Why would I?" Emma countered. "Who'd want to hear it? My parents would probably have labeled that guard my true love and Pastor Tim best foster father of the year."

"That's a bit harsh."

"They sided with a rapist who murdered their grandson's father and tried to murder their son raising her kid over his father that she slept with after murdering his wife and eventually murdered too - and were still okay with it. Plus, they sent Roland back with Little John and Friar Tuck the child molester. Plus, they knew Regina raped Graham for like forty years or something."

"To be fair, no one knew Friar Tuck was a child molester, though, yeah, the Zelena thing and Graham is pretty bad judgment."

"Yeah, pretty much!" Emma grumbled.

"Look, I get you're freaking out here-"

"Because I kind of repressed the worst of what Pastor Tim did and convinced myself it was just some over the covers groping by a creepy priest and his bipolar wife-"

"Til the duck sex toy thing," Neal concluded.

"The police councilor lady gave me Mr. Quackington," explained Emma. "And I just keep seeing it over and over," she gloomily continued. "I don't know what's worse, the memories or seeing my parents doing _that_. I haven't even taken a bath since leaving here when Pan cast his curse. I thought Mr. Quackington burned in the fire that didn't happen. I couldn't bring myself to take a bath, even though I knew it was stupid.

"And I guess since the whole Dark Swan spell thing transported all my stuff to my creepy house last time I've just been too busy to remember that I'd left him at the Loft and go get him since it's not like I was going to take a bath in one of Granny's petrii dishes."

"You could switch to hot tubs."

"I'm sure every hot tub in this town is swimming with Hook's STD's," she snorted. "He probably jumps fences at night and bathes in them like a bear."

"He definitely has the back hair to look like one," Neal considered.

"Hook has _back hair_?" Emma choked.

"Saw him when I was taking a walk. He had another session with that shaman. Pocahontas said he had to stop using some magical hair shit that's supposed to transfer hair from other parts of your body to your head since it leads to sterility."

"That's a thing?"

"Sterility?"

Emma punched him in the arm.

Neal answered seriously, "It's a thing. Used to be an apothecary at the market we'd take yarn when I was a kid who sold it. Papa used to say that the butcher who had weird curly bangs was using it to transfer his pubs to his head. He was kind of a baby-faced guy. Not a lot of other body hair to choose from. But given Hook's chest hair, I mean, that's generally a package deal."

Emma shuddered as it suddenly made sense why Hook's hair had gotten progressively... weird looking after arriving in Storybrooke. "Oh my God, I spent years running my hands through and putting my face in Hook's _back hair_!? I think I'm going to be sick!"

"Yeah, I threw up a little my mouth at that realization," said Neal. "Though, I admit, I did laugh a bit too. I mean, you let me die, but then you sniffed Hook's back hair for the rest of your life, so..."

"I'm such a loser!" Emma moaned. "What kind of person goes through that shit I did and then befriends and marries rapists and child-abusers, never mind people who are that fucking _vane_?"

"A really messed up one? You've been repressing one and justifying the other as hormones, Emma, for two lifetimes, and believe me, I know how that shit can mess you up."

At her befuddled look, Neal relayed, "Let's just say the new kids in Neverland quickly figured out that Pan wasn't the one to fear the most. You could outwit his mind-games and the wounds his forced fights left healed eventually. The kinda shit that Felix got up to with his unrequited love for his asexual leader, it lead more than a few kids to throw themselves to the mermaids."

Emma gave him a wide-eyed look. "You mean that Felix-"

"Didn't like that I was Pan's new favorite, dosed me with pixie dust and I spent the next week unable to sit comfortably?" Neal returned. "At least when Pan found out, he took Felix's heart and made him make a fool of himself to teach him not to touch me again. I guess he figured I'd be too messed up to sleep with a woman and make his prophesied heart donor otherwise.

"Which didn't mean Felix didn't keep trying after I got away from 'em all," Neal recalled. "Pan wasn't all-knowing. On the occasions he left Neverland or was using some creepy mind-melding magic to see through The Shadow's eyes in search of new victims, that blonde freak would come looking for me to beat the shit outta me and then try to get his version of make-up sex. That's how I met Tinkerbell, actually. She clocked him over the head with a coconut. Which, thinking about it, makes it kinda messed up that I lost my virginity to her."

"Besides you being fourteen."

"Yeah, that too."

"You don't think that Henry...?" Emma asked, suddenly horrified at the thought.

"Naw, Pan had to have kept him close. If Henry distrusted them in any way he'd have never given Pan his heart. Felix was a psychopathic child molester, but his devotion to Pan outweighed his sick needs in the short-term. After what Pan did to him on my account? Naw, he wouldn't have risked it."

Emma slumped back in relief but looked at Neal sadly. "So all that time in Neverland, you were living in constant fear of getting raped by some lunatic?"

"It was pretty good motivation to find a way out. Only took a couple hundred years."

"I'm sorry. No child should have to... You deserved so much better for escaping that," Emma told him.

"And you deserved so much better for escaping that priest _and_ that guard," Neal sighed. "But did we? I mean, in the literal sense Pan let me go. Some cops caught your perv. In the metaphorical, though, you never really escape that kind of shit. It's always there. Would you have ended up with Hook if you weren't diddled as a kid and assaulted by that guard? Would I have settled for a shifty bitch like Tamara if I wasn't worried I'd been personalty scared by Neverland and was just lucky someone showed an interest?"

Emma miserably considered, "It's like we had this one perfect moment in time when we could have helped each other heal from that crap, but instead August ruined it and we just kept making bad choices and now we're too messed up - or I am anyway- to put back together again. I turned out to be Humpty Dumpty, Neal!"

"Well, you turned out to be _some_ famous fairy tale character at least," he quipped.

"I'd rather be a nobody than an idiot ruler known for a big-ass wall who got himself smashed to irreparable pieces!"

"It really does fit you, now that I think about it-"

Emma punched Neal in the arm again. "I'm trying to be deep here!"

"Then stop hitting me!"

"It's how I deal with not knowing how to be deep about things!" Emma huffed. "It's either hitting you or screwing you, and besides you stating having zero interest in sleeping with me, I think fucking in a metal elevator cage would be a lot more painful!"

"Plus there's the electrocution factor," Neal pointed out as the lights flickered and one popped, throwing sparks.

Emma slumped back again and he advised, "Emma, I know it's hard, but now that you remember it, you have face up to it and then you acknowledge it every day, how it messed you up, how you'll never be a whole person again. Which is really _really_ hard. But otherwise you bury it again, let it fester, subconsciously influencing a shit ton of bad decisions that leads to dealing with things by either punching or fucking."

"You make it sound so _fun_. Punching and fucking sounds better. No way I'm telling all this to Archie! I'd rather die!"

Neal sighed. "Look, I'm not an expert, but you can talk to me. I volunteered, helped kids that'd been through abusive situations talk about it. A lot of street kids at shelters, trying to get them into programs before they ended up turning into drug addicts and prostitutes. Always felt guilty I wasn't able to help Rufio, that I left who knows how many other kids there who ended up choosing suicide by pirate or mermaid. I know, logically, running was the only choice I had, but it still feels cowardly sometimes. At least that way I was helping some kids, even if it wasn't the Lost Boys. I just hope I did more good than in my attempt to help Wendy and her brothers."

"I'm sure you did," Emma assured him, even as she felt more guilty for not knowing that about him. "You probably did more good in your life than I ever did. I didn't even help the Lost Boys in Storybrooke. I promised to help them gets homes, find families, and I never did that..."

She sniffed and realized in disgust, "Most of them were probably living in the forest getting molested by Friar-"

"Is that smoke?" Neal cut her off.

Before Emma could blow enough snot out of her nose to even begin to tell, the wall that hid the elevator opened revealing a smoke-shrouded Blue Fairy holding the Black Fairy's wand. She gave it a swish and they were transported to the street.

The Library was almost fully engulfed in flames.

Belle was crying as the rather pathetic old pumper truck attempted to douse the flames. Hook was babbling something about his rum and Funyuns stash to an irate Tinkerbell while Snow and Charming stood with Regina and a worried Henry who ran up with a cry of, "Mom! Dad!" to hug them both.

"Well done," Regina drawled. "You managed to do what in twenty-eight years I could never get done. You don't know how many times I tried to get rid of this damn place."

"It wasn't on purpose," Emma sniffed. "Can't you stop it?"

The Blue Fairy answered, "It was your magic that started the fire. There's darkness in your magic. And with pixie dust as an accelerant," she scoffed with a glare at Tinkerbell. "Never mind the residual protection spells _Mayor Mills_ placed on it _and_ the residue from Maleficent's dragon magic that was dispersed all over when you," she scoffed at Emma, "turned her to magical dust. You're lucky I was able to get you out, but there will be a price for using this," she said with a distasteful look at the wand before she stalked off then, leaving Emma even more miserable.

She told Belle, "I'm really sorry. I'll buy you new books."

"A lot of those were ancient magical tomes that can't be reproduced!" Belle huffed. "At least your stupid jacket is ruined! Everyone else might have believed it made you some kind of badass, that it was your Superman cape, but I know what it was. When everyone was ignoring me while Rumple was in a coma, I read all of the information that Regina had Sydney find out about you - all your dirty secrets that he paid that creep genie to give him after you won the election."

Looking superior, Belle informed, "I know the jacket, the tight-ass jeans, the boots, the way you walk, it's all a bad imitation of a woman who died because you're a stupid selfish amoral fucktard and _this_ is just a sad little attempt by a scared little fraud to intimidate people into not realizing that if you didn't have that badass act and what it tricks people into giving you, you'd still be a dorky little loser who deserves the shitty situation she's in - you know what everyone thinks _I_ am."

Emma recoiled at the accusation while a grim-faced and wincing Rumple took his wife by the arm. "Come now, Belle. Let's go back home. I'm sure much of it can be replaced..."

Belle pulled away from him rather angrily and Rumple was left to limp after her.

As they walked away, Emma sniffled and asked Neal, "Did your step mom just compare me to your dad and call us frauds?"

"Seemed like it," Neal exhaled. "That's gonna be one awkward drive home..."

"Mom?" Henry asked, dismay in his voice. "Is what Belle said true?"

"It is," Emma muttered with an ashamed look at her son. "I was a bad person until about two years ago, Kid. My clothes, my attitude, it's all just an act to look badass and do a job I didn't even really want, that had nothing to do with being a good guy and fighting for justice when I took it, just a plea-bargain to stay out of jail for skipping on my probation back in Phoenix. I didn't live in ten cities in ten years because I was fighting crime, it was because I was a criminal on the run. I just... I didn't want you to be disappointed in me," she concluded while Henry's expression transformed from confusion to shock to betrayal and disgust, reminding her painfully of that day in Neal's apartment.

As Henry turned and stormed off, Regina pursed her lips and declared, "So, I _was_ right all along. How do you like that? You on your high horse, calling me names, putting yourself on a hero's pedestal when you had blood on your hands and were pulling off your own charade. Which of us was the bigger impostor? At least I owned being the Evil Queen when I looked in the mirror. Did you actually fool yourself into thinking _this hero act_ was for real? And I thought _Hook_ was delusional!"

"Hey, at least I didn't rape and mass murder anyone!" Emma hissed. "You've _never_ held yourself accountable for that! You act like you just suffered from multiple personality disorder or some shit and it's not your fault that 'Evil Queen' personality killed people. Well, you know what, it is your fault! That's not _part_ of you, _it's you_! I may have gotten one woman killed by being a selfish jerk, but you intentionally ordered the slaughter of hundreds of men, women, and children all because some stupid princess was prettier than you! And you wonder why fate was cruel to take Robin away? It's because _you_ were cruel _and he was your soulmate_! Tinkerbell said you ruined both of your lives, and you did! He was bound to you by magic, whether it was actually being your soulmate or that fucking pixie dust you used to find him, and because you don't deserve a happy ending, someone good, after decades of slaughtering innocent people, _the price of magic was his life_!"

Regina stood stiffly for a moment, then lashed out and smacked Emma hard across the face.

The street lights fizzled and the former Evil Queen glared.

"Maybe I wouldn't have needed that pixie dust if this world allowed anyone even five minutes to grieve. I'm the one who lost someone, that everyone is terrified is going to go evil again and kill them all, and you're throwing a magical tantrum over a toy that destroyed a building and nearly got your entire family killed. So which one of us is the real danger here, _Miss Swan_?"

Regina gave one last glare before storming off.

"Emma," Snow began.

"She's right. You don't want to be near me right now," Emma told her mother, pretty sure she would completely lose it and give the woman another concussion if she had to hear a speech. She just wanted a portal to suck her in and take her far away from here and the cold hard truths she didn't want to face. But there wasn't a portal around, so she headed down the block in no particular direction, just away from the group of gawking looky-loos watching the Library burn to the ground.

Neal jogged to catch up with her.

"Please, just leave me alone," she sighed.

"You can't just walk off into the woods like last time," Neal told her. "I've still got my room at the Inn, and as long as we get there before Granny ambles her way back from gawking at the fire, she can't refuse to give you a room for being a fire code violation."

"Which is a perfectly legit reason that I should avoid the place!"

"You're not gonna burn down the Inn," Neal told her, giving her arm a tug toward Granny's.

"You don't know that."

"I do actually," he said with a smirk, gesturing to the anti-magic cuff he'd just slapped on her. "Snagged it from the pawnshop awhile ago. Figured it might eventually come in handy."

"And you couldn't just hand it over before I burned down the Library!?"

Neal shrugged. "I didn't think you'd go that far or take into account Tinkerbell's pixie dust prank countering anti-fire spells. And it's not like it's a big loss. Might be beneficial actually. I was storing all the books from New York in the attic. Last thing we need is someone taking a magic quill to worlds we've never been to."

Emma gave him a wary look. "Was it really safe storing them there? What if setting them on magical fire had some... bad magical consequence?"

"Well, a portal hasn't opened up and dropped one of Don Quixote's windmills on us, so I think we're safe," Neal quipped as they approached Granny's.

"I'd rather go through the back," Emma mumbled, every time she had to walk by the place making her think of all the times she ignored Henry to selfishly make-out in front of the diner.

"Fine," Neal didn't argue and tossed her his room key. "Find something good on TV. I'll get us some dinner."

Emma raised a brow. "If you're thinking we're going to Netflix and chill... I'd be okay with that."

"Therapy," said Neal.

* * *

(flashback)

As the police car pulled up to the group home, saw a familiar couple talking with the administrator on the front steps by the maple tree. They'd been to see her twice, had talked about fostering her, maybe even more than that from what Emma had overheard, what she'd been desperately hoping.

Her heart leapt with hope for a moment-

And then it sunk when the couple gave her a look of disappointment and betrayal and headed to their car.

"I'm sorry, Emma," the administrator said with a somewhat sympathetic look as Emma gloomily climbed the steps to meet her, "but you're being transferred to a home for problem children."

"I didn't mean to hurt anyone," Emma cried. "I just wanted to see a movie. I didn't even sneak into the right theater..."

"Well, that's karma, isn't it, then?" the woman told her, though not harshly. "Maybe this will teach you to stop stealing, Emma. I know you don't do it for bad reasons, but the law is the law."

"No one's ever going to adopt me now, are they?" she sniffled, watching the couple drive off.

"Don't think like that. Someday you'll have a family."

Emma nodded. She didn't believe it, though, not anymore. This was her last chance, she felt it in her heart as she packed her meager possessions. Why did the good guys _never_ believe her? Why did they always punish her?

 _Good guys aren't so good_! Emma silently huffed.

It was the bad guys like that creepy pervert probably child molester usher who scared her who got away with things. He was probably touching some kid in the bathroom right now while her happy ending was walking away, labeling her the bad guy. She wasn't! She just did bad things sometimes because her life sucked and it sucked a bit less if she didn't have to walk home.

Stupid her for trying to celebrate, to be happy and normal for one day.

Her happy ending was ruined.

All because of a stupid sword in a stupid stone!

* * *

AN: And there you have it, why Merlin felt responsible for the asshole that Emma became and the ways in which she suffered that she would not have if she hadn't gotten caught with that wallet. Who knows what an Emma who was adopted by a nice couple would have become? Most-likely not the Emma we have in canon today! (Pastor Tim & Alice are names taken from _The Americans_ , but they are not pedophiles, just annoying there). As for Emma being molested as a kid and raped in prison, I know it's cliché, but this is a show about clichés, and they LOVE rape as a reason women are evil. Cora was an ambitious but moral feminist who got raped and turned evil. Zelena was a product of rape who turned evil and raped a guy. Ingrid was almost molested as a kid and almost raped as an adult and turned evil! So it's legit by OUAT logic that Emma being molested _and_ raped would cause her to grow up to be evil and even more fucked up than the villains who just raped or almost molested. As for Neverland, that was based loosely on MRJ's part on _Game of Silence_ , Gil, who was molested at a juvenile detention facility when he was fourteen. Belle's OOC crude attack on Emma is from a tweet by Natalie Tudor York. Yes, Emma, you are a fucktard.

Next up: An epilogue to Emma and Neal's elevator conversation.


	79. Room Without a View Part Two

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **GUEST: 1) See above. 2) What makes you think Tink and Neal are not friends? People sometimes have a falling out with a friend. Tink has a substance abuse problem. That doesn't mean the two won't patch things up if she gets help.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR**

 **ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW PART TWO  
**

Emma managed to shower - in the almost dark with her eyes closed just to get through it because it didn't help that Tamara had probably bathed here - and then found one of Neal's t-shirts to wear. She hadn't had much occasion to wear any of this clothes when they were living in car and it felt weird and a little heartbreaking pulling one on now.

She was pulling on too-big socks to fight the chill of the floor when Neal arrived with bags of greasy food that smelled heavenly. Though his brows raised at her change in attire, he didn't comment.

"Grilled cheese and onion rings," Neal said, handing it over. "Rootbeer floats. Kitchen was out of chocolate ice cream."

"Thanks," Emma muttered, feeling self-conscious of her bare legs that she hadn't shaved in a week and she quickly sat down cross-legged on the bed and unwrapped her sandwich while Neal grabbed the morning's paper from the nightstand and used it to set up an indoor picnic on the bed the way they used to back in Portland.

"So..." she asked, lest he bring up how this was just like old times, "you're really not looking for a place of your own? I mean, I get not wanting to live with your father and Belle..."

"Naw," Neal replied while pulling out his BLT with mustard instead of mayo and fries and wishing Storybrooke had better food. Even if he wasn't binge-eating like Hook, it was doing nothing for the gut he'd been trying to work off.

"Not even... you know... switch rooms?" Emma asked. "I mean, I know you didn't have time before you, you know-"

"Died twice?"

"Yeah... And I know the forest people have kind of taken over the place, but you could probably ask to switch..."

"It's not a big deal," Neal insisted, brow raised slightly. "I mean, nothing happened here between me and Tamara. I went to bed, she was out running. I woke up, she was getting ready to go running. Which I assume meant 'down the hall fucking Greg' and 'just got back from fucking Greg'... or, I guess, torturing Hook or Regina or whatever sick shit they got up to."

Shrugging, he amended, "Compared to the other options, it's the lesser of all the evils. Tink's room is probably coated in pixie dust _and_ it's next door to Hook's. Then there's the room Ruby said Regina and her sex slave banged in for twenty-eight years which is also the room pretty much everyone else in town uses for their elicit couplings, so the place probably looks like the Blue Man Group exploded under a black light..."

"There's mine and Henry's old room," Emma pointed out. "It wasn't bad. I mean, it smelled a bit moldy. I could, you know, wiggle my nose and turn the twin beds into a queen."

"And risk getting reamed by Granny for messing up her _Hotel Hell_ vibe?" countered Neal, and he shrugged again. "Besides, don't you need a room? You can't sleep in your mom's car forever."

"Asking to share?" inquired Emma, surprised.

"Just wondering what your plan is," said Neal. "I think some family with six kids is using it anyway."

"No plan," Emma grumbled. "Turns out I overestimated how easily I'd be able to find a place when I moved out. I didn't consider how many forest people had enough gold coins or how many residents with spare rooms would take a sob story as a security deposit. I might actually have to move back in with my pervert parents," she concluded with a scowl.

"Well, that's what you get for burning down your creepy old fuckpad," teased Neal with a smirk. "Coulda been some forest hobo's fuckpad instead of a charred hole in the ground and then you'd have a room."

"I'd still have had to drive by it, though," Emma complained.

"Why? You're not the Sheriff anymore. You're not obligated to patrol the streets."

"I didn't know I was going to resign when I blew it up!" huffed Emma while mashing her onion ring into some ketchup and watching the breading fall off. "And you know what? I'm fucking tired of fucking onion rings! I've never even liked them!"

"Um... then why did you always order them back in Portland and Granny says it's your usual?" asked Neal, confused.

"I don't know!" Emma moaned. "I just wanted to be different as a kid so I'd stand out and maybe some family would adopt me, and I know onion rings instead of french fries is a stupid thing to think would make a difference, but I was getting kind of desperate! And then I guess it just became a habit and I stopped _hating_ them and you thought it was interesting that I ordered them instead of fries... So I kept the Bug and ordering stupid onion rings, and then Hook thought they were my favorite too so he kept bringing me onion rings, so how I was supposed to tell him that I only ordered them because you thought I liked them and then I have to give them up, which, I mean, I don't like them, but he'd probably have been thrilled I was giving them meaning you up for him, which I know I did anyway, and I know I'm rambling, but I'm just so fucking tired of fucking onion rings!" she sniffed, feeling stupid for crying about food.

Neal pushed over his fries. "You could have just asked."

"I'm sorry," Emma sighed. "I guess the whole recovered childhood trauma thing has got me thinking about a lot of stupid stuff I've done with my life for stupid reasons."

"Like pretending to like onion rings."

"And pretending to be a badass bounty hunter who gave a shit about justice about crime victims and women with deadbeat asshole ex's," she grumbled. "And now everyone knows I'm a fraud and that just makes all of this so much harder! How am I supposed to help people when they think I'm a compulsive lying slut? I can't even help myself find a place to live!"

Shaking her head, Emma lamented, "I don't know how to deal with coming back here, seeing all of this stuff with a different perspective that makes everything I used to think was my happy ending into a twisted pile of perversions. All I see is one screw-up after another, one more massive character flaw that I have no idea how to fix to be what I'm supposed to be. And now that's all everyone _else_ sees."

"Hey, at least they _see you_ ," Neal countered. "I've got a tombstone and it's like no one cares. They didn't care that I died. I had, what seven people at my funeral, and Hook was only there because he wanted to bang you, Robin was only there because he was banging Regina who was only there for Henry who didn't even remember me and your parents were their out of guilt. I was just some schmuck who came to town and died a couple of weeks later. Now I'm back, but I'm still just a schmuck with no job who can't get by on a pretty face or panty-wetting accent or even an epic back-story of all the damsels I saved... or banged or whatever. I could kick it again, and no one'd really give a fuck other than my old man and Henry for maybe like five minutes, because they sure as shit got over me fast last time around."

"I'd give a fuck," Emma said sadly.

"You'd get over it again too," shrugged Neal. "You might not be as screwed and selfish as before, and I appreciate that you at least think you care Emma, but you've buried me enough times already and there's always some crisis to focus on, so you'd get over it and I'd still just be 'that guy' you loved once when you didn't know who you were, before your life got meaning."

"But that's when I was the best version of me," Emma complained. "Finding out who I 'really am'," she made air quotes, "or at least believing it, is when I started getting seriously fucked up! My life had the most meaning when we fought for each other, when we tried to be good people even when we had to do bad things to survive, when we dreamed about just being regular people with boring jobs who took our kids to the beach crammed into the Bug. That's the life that would have made me the happiest, but the choices we both made ended that before it even began, and we kept on making bad choices so nothing like it ever could. I never wanted a fairy tale, Neal, but that's what I got stuck with, and it screwed me up even more than I already was... and I don't know how to un-screw-up myself."

"Therapy?"

Emma threw an onion ring at Neal, which missed and landed in the ugly gray chalice on the nightstand. She snorted, "Well, at least the onion rings aren't cursed. Maybe I should pour my rootbeer float in it and see if it takes away all my magic for good?"

"Considering bringing magic into the world through the vessel of Merlin led to the creation of the Dark One," Neal countered, "the Savior drinking out of it's double would probably take all magic our of the world... with some equally horrible consequences."

"Yeah, probably," Emma conceded. "It'd be a good plan, though, if it wasn't for the horrible consequences part."

"And it could kill you," Neal reminded after swallowing a bite of his sandwich. "Magic is part of you, Emma."

"Not by natural design, though! It's only because I was basically cursed in-utero. True love conception's got nothing to do with it, no matter how long my parents tried to bullshit that theory on everyone."

"Still mad at them about that, huh?"

"Little bit, yeah!" grumbled Emma. "Sometimes I wish they'd all stayed stuck in that stupid steampunk world, you know? That Tamara had really killed The Dragon and we never found a way to portal them all back and it could have been just me and Henry and Regina - but not in a gay way - like back before The Curse broke with no magic and no crazy relatives other than your dad."

"Yeah, probably would have had a less crazy life that way," Neal agreed.

"Plus, no Hook, so I'd have maybe un-skanked myself with time and found a way to reclaim my soul," mused Emma. "I've been wondering if maybe part of it's the whole cursed kiss Zelena put on him, you know? She told him it would take away everything about me that made me special and powerful. Which has to include my soul, right?"

"Well, I wouldn't put past her to have been experimenting with some variation on the Curse of the Empty-Hearted," said Neal. "She did get Regina's heart, after all, so I suppose she coulda used it in combination with you smooching him inexplicably back from drowning. Might explain the inexplicable resuscitation by nonexistent CPR. And people under that Curse do develop a blind infatuation with their intended that they mistake for true love."

"Plus the syphilis," snorted Emma. "And the soul-separation. And the stupid shit curse my parents put on me before I was born."

"And Isaac," interjected Neal. "The guy did kick it, what, a couple of hours before The Apprentice tried to stuff the Dark One in that hat? He'd have had time to pencil in a 'if then Emma becomes the Dark One' situation in that other book of his that Henry destroyed before anyone read what he added to it."

"Great," groaned Emma. "So who the hell knows how it all combined in this world where magic has like no set rules to fuck me over! I just hate that I feel like I never had control over anything, whether it was being a good person or a complete asshole - which is maybe how everyone is stuck here, but I was supposed to be the one to break the mold and instead I broke reality... twice."

"Third time's the charm?"

"I hope so," sighed Emma.

Neal finished his drink, then told her, "Look, Em, we both got robbed of being the best versions of ourselves. Most people probably do when you think about it. Most people have probably got either a shit parent or a bad teacher or a back-stabbing friend, someone who gets them to make one choice instead of another and then the great thing they could have become or done isn't as likely and becomes more and more out of reach as they make more choices based on that choice until one day you think back to what you wanted to be, to do with your life when you were a kid and think it was never possible at all based on who you are... cause it hurts less than to plot out all the right choices you _should_ have made to be that person. It's easier to just think you were always gonna turn out an asshole. Then here, you throw in magic as the cause of all ills and it's less depressing than admitting a mix of bad circumstances and shitty judgment got you where you are, to a place where it's too late to have the things you used to dream about and you've just gotta make due with your crap hand."

"That _is_ depressing."

"Yeah, no shit it's depressing," agreed Neal. "But the only other option is some heroic death, but good luck with that if you're not already a legendary hero with a knighthood or a kingdom, or even a villain cleaning up your mess Darth Vader style. Everyone else, even if you die for a good cause, people don't really care," he complained.

"I mean, what good did my death do? Zelena got to live happily ever after with her kid and Henry eventually forgot she had anything to do with, you know, _murdering me_. I didn't achieve anything lasting, anything that wasn't almost instantly undone when you went back in time. And if you don't have a memorable death that means something, people forget, apparently even those that are supposed to love you."

"I really am sorry, Neal," Emma told him sadly.

"I know," he sighed, "and I really don't blame you anymore, Emma. It just... _sucks_ that I can't seem to connect with anyone, that it feels like I'm always just meant to be the outsider, the misfit. I'm not famous or infamous enough or cool enough or good looking enough. I don't fit any of the categories that count around here to be someone who's not the equivalent of a red shirt on _Star Trek_."

"Been sci-fi movie binging?" Emma asked, trying to lighten Neal's mood.

"Well, not much else to do around here," shrugged Neal. "Henry's avoiding me. My father's up to some scheming. Tink's dealing drugs. The only thing I've got going for me, apparently, is regular depressing conversations with you. Which, I guess, is better than sitting around moping alone, but still. I mean, I'm back from the dead. I should be happy to have a second chance-"

"But it just feels like we got punked," concluded Emma with a deep frown.

"A bit, yeah."

"I suppose I deserved it, though," snorted Emma. "For all the horribly selfish things I've done. 'Here, you get a second chance to be The Savior'. The catch being that no one thinks I'm up to the challenge anymore, that I'm just a selfish jerk. Which is what everyone should have seen when I _really was a selfish jerk_! And now I'm really trying not to be, and I all get is yelled at by everyone... so I guess I kind of understand what Regina went through when she really was trying to be good and help everyone - while still screwing up half of the time."

"So find her and tell her that," Neal suggested. "You're even less to blame for Robin dying this time around, so the only thing she has to hold against you is upsetting Henry - which she also forgave last time. I'm not saying become BFFs again, cause that was weird, but, you know, you could encourage each other to not be assholes for Henry's sake."

"Maybe," Emma considered. "She was a better drinking buddy than Hook who just used it as an excuse to get into my pants."

"Probably all of you should quit drinking."

"But then how would we endure this shitty life? It had to be alcohol that made everyone think it was so great! Well, and the syphilis," said Emma, "and my mom's brain injuries. And, I guess, pixie dust and various magical editing and curses and time travel that messed with our perception of reality..."

"Yeah, no wonder the universe imploded!" snorted Neal.

"Yeah," sighed Emma, "maybe it wouldn't have if I wasn't such a shit parent. Sometimes I think you were the only one who really understood Henry, even if you didn't know him for all that long. But I screwed that up once, left you dead and the kid without his dad, and I screwed it up this time too. He wants nothing to do with either of us."

"At least Henry isn't back to drinking the 'love magic' Kool Aid. There's still a chance he won't grow up hating us. That's a good thing."

"I don't know," sighed Emma. "He forgave me for the dreamcatchers, but that was in a messed up world where I he _was_ drinking that Kool Aid. Now... I think this is a lie I'm not gonna get out of, Neal. I basically misrepresented myself our entire relationship."

"So did Regina, and he's given her a chance."

"Regina raised him. She's his 'mommy'. Henry's going to love her no matter what. Me? I came on the scene late and he only overlooked the abandonment thing because he bought the 'giving him his best chance' fairy tale parallel crap to my own birth which turned out to be a lie too. He's not ten anymore and he knows the memories we shared that year in New York are more lies than half-truths," Emma stated, "so now I'm definitely not the hero he thought I was or even could be. The kid deserved better from me."

Shaking her head, Emma amended, "So did you. So did Robin. He shouldn't have had to die. If I hadn't fucked up defeating Pan by being a shitty mother, he'd still be in The Enchanted Forest raising Roland, never brainwashed by that true love with Regina bullshit. And you wouldn't have died and all the crap that happened after that with our family, because you wouldn't have stood for it. We would have kicked Zelena's ass and really worked on being a family, the one Henry wanted us to be, the one he deserved to get instead of a recovering rapist-slash-murderers for an aunt and stepfather.

"You shouldn't have had to die because your father was a selfish asshole," she continued, "or because I decided you weren't my true love anymore. It's such bullshit that true love is this... fickle... well _bullshit_ that you can have one moment and not the next. That if it's romantic but then it's not, even if you still truly love someone not romantically, if you're not blood-related, somehow it doesn't count."

"Blood magic's factual magic," Neal told her. "That's the difference. But they're both still fucked up. True love magic... it's all belief, so you can be an asshole adopted parent with a psychopath's narcissistic definition of love for your kid and it'll still work. Blood magic has to work, asshole or not, whether you know each other or not, like that crap with Regina and Zelena as kids. Like the spell my old man used to 'merge' us to keep me alive. No matter how fucked up and wrong it is or if you're just using someone as a pawn, blood'll make it work.

"Which isn't any better or worse than if you're a psychopath who gets in a fight with your true love the day a sleeping curse hits," he considered, "so the magic is just not strong enough. I mean, if your mother had told your father to fuck off before she went off to meet Regina and eat that apple, probably you'd have never been conceived. True love breaking curses is just not wanting to punch each other in the face at all the right moments."

Emma snorted and mused, "Kinda wish my dad had punched my mom in the face over the cursing me thing. I mean, I'm totally against domestic abuse - what with the whole getting myself stuck in an emotionally and psychotically abusive marriage to a man who saw nothing wrong with hitting women and once slammed me headfirst into a wall - which really should have been a deal-breaker before we were ever a thing -but I'd make the one exception just to not turn out so completely fucked up as a person that I'd fall in love with an abusive asshole."

Neal finished the last onion ring and countered, "Okay, but what if they didn't cast it? Then there would've maybe been no Dark Curse. I'd have stayed stuck in Neverland 'cause Pan wouldn't have let me go to the Land Without Magic to make Henry with you - so I guess he'd have had The Shadow bring me back to The Enchanted Forest," considered Neal, "if that 'prophesy' even still applied since Henry was needed to believe in The Curse to get you to Storybrooke and his heart thing was just a happy coincidence for Pan. So maybe we'd have never met because Henry wasn't destined for anything," Neal considered, "and you'd have ended up marrying some random jerk prince. Or even ended up again with Hook after Cora tried to take over The Kingdom and Zelena tried to change history, because you'd have grown up in a world where men abusinv women and getting sexual favors for not being as big of an asshole as a guy wants to be is just how things go."

"You don't know that," Emma insisted, shaking her head. "We were supposed to meet, Neal. Curse or no Curse. Who knows, maybe I'd have ended up taken to Neverland as a kid or something? And maybe if I'd have seen what a complete dick Hook was to you, I wouldn't have ever fallen for his false charms. We still could have had Henry and raised him together and been happy."

Shaking her head again, Emma insisted, "Whatever kind of life I might have lived, you were meant to be part of it. You gave me hope, made me a better person. You were the best friend I've ever had. And I know I wouldn't have ever been happy living in a castle as a princess, _even_ if I was raised that way. My brother could have inherited everything and we could have just had our regular life, had our Tallahassee somewhere in Fairy Tale Land... even if it was badly scripted. I'd rather share a badly written story with you than anyone."

"Doesn't matter now, though," Neal reminded. "We're going off script, writing our own stories... or trying to, anyway, with mixed results."

"What are you going to do?" asked Emma as she picked at some congealed cheese on her sandwich wrapper. "I mean, what's your story? What do you want to be? To do with your second chance?"

Neal shrugged. "Drawing and math are the only things I've ever been good at. Doing Granny's books gets me a room, but it's not my life goal. I used to think maybe I'd do a children's book, but never got around to writing a good story to illustrate. Words aren't really my strong-suit. I thought maybe if I got that publishing company job, in a few years, if things went well... but that doesn't matter now either."

"It does matter," Emma argued. "You should follow your dreams, Neal."

"Not everyone has that luxury," he argued with a glance at the dreamcatcher he'd hung in the room's window. He didn't know why he'd hung it up here when the bad memories now outweighed the one good one.

"Most people don't," he concluded, and cleared his trash. "It's getting late. I'm gonna take a shower."

Emma watched Neal gather his gather his things and head into the bathroom then turned her gaze sadly on the dreamcatcher, remembering how she'd carefully packed it in the trunk after Regina's confrontation with Zelena, then back in Storybrooke wrapped it in her blanket and kept it in her box in her office at the Station when she couldn't bare to look at it anymore.

She _definitely_ couldn't bare to look at it after she used dreamcatchers to take her family member's memories to cover up murder. It had stayed wrapped in that blanket for the rest of her life, two bitter memories of what was meant to be her happiness but was instead reminders of everything she'd lost, a person she could have been but would never be because other people's actions and the cruel hand of fate had snatched those futures away and forced her to change into someone different, someone who was not a benevolent princess looking out for her subjects - nor an optimistic young lover and loving wife and mother who had the best brought out of her by the family she chose. And certainly not a heroic bounty hunter fighting for justice.

Emma wanted to believe that should have been any of those, that if her mother hadn't had that spell cast on her before birth and Rumplestiltskin had never made her his get-out-curse-card, she could have been a good person in whatever life she lived. If she'd just grown up _whole_ without some tainted magic she wasn't supposed to have, she could have been strong enough to just _be herself_ and _be a good person_ at the same time, instead of having to put on an act to seem like she was a hero, because she didn't think she could be otherwise.

As the shower came on, Emma laid down and shut her eyes, letting the exhaustion she'd been fighting finally take over. It felt like it had been years since she'd slept.

* * *

AN: Sorry for the long break between chapters. Life has been busy. Sorry for the depressing chapter. There's a few more angsty ones before humor returns.

Next up: Cleaning up some messes.


	80. Ashes to Ashes

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **GUEST: 1) See above. 2) What makes you think Tink and Neal are not friends? People sometimes have a falling out with a friend. Tink has a substance abuse problem. That doesn't mean the two won't patch things up if she gets help.**

 **SPOILER WARNING: Don't read the Author's Note at the end unless you have watched** _ **Orange is the New Black**_ **Season 4. (Or don't give a fuck about the show.)**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE**

 **ASHES TO ASHES**

 _I never done good things_

 _I never done bad things_

 _I never did anything out of the blue,_

 _Want an axe to break the ice_

 _Wanna come down right now_

Emma awoke to the clock radio scratchily blaring David Bowie - and the clanking radiator. She swatted blearily at the closer of the offensive noise makers succeeding in knocking the alarm clock onto the floor and shifting the tuner dial to full-on static.

" _Damn it_ ," she grumbled, hanging over the side of the bed and finally just yanking at the cord until it came of the outlet.

That done, Emma finally realized the oddity of sleeping in a bed after having camped out in a car for a week.

She rubbed grit from her eyes as she remembered that she was in Neal's room at Granny's. Just like the last time, he wasn't there, and there was a moment of panic that everything since had been a dream and he was still dead - then she found a note on the night stand indicating he'd gone to help clean up the Library. On the other side of the paper he'd done a quick sketch of her sleeping that brought back uncomfortable memories of following Henry to New York.

Regina had found a letter from Robin, but she'd found a folder of old sketches that Neal had done, some of them yellowed, many of them of her from when they were together, others that seemed to be variations on the large charcoal drawing on the bookshelf in his apartment, but clearly with them and a child, some masochistic envisioning of Tallahassee that would never happen.

It had made her sad and angry and redoubled her effort to bury all that pain and grief - real grief for someone she'd really loved - and devote herself entirely to the sexy, shallow distraction that was her affair with Hook. Her grief when he died was, quite honestly, grief for herself, for losing _again_ and more importantly losing the addiction she'd been using to self-medicate the pain of all the shit that had gone wrong in her life that she didn't want to face, the most devastating being the death of her son's father and knowing she was, on several levels, complicit in his dying and being unable to return the way Hook had.

If she focused on having Hook there to distract from everything else, she didn't have to deal with the self-loathing she felt deep down that she'd risked everything for someone who certainly didn't deserve a second chance to get into her pants - but hadn't risked anything for Neal who'd just wanted to be a dad, who'd had her back even when he could tell she'd already chosen his deadbeat stepfather over him.

"I'm such an asshole," Emma told her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

She had all kinds of possible magical extenuating circumstance excuses for a lot of the bad things she'd done, but most of that compounding crap came after Neal died. She had her parents' curse on her causing her to be drawn toward villains to fill that void, and she probably had syphilis for like a year, and some lingering pixie dust in her brain besides, and maybe even later on those creepy flowers that Arthur had kept everywhere and Hook always brought her with the same unnerving frequency the psychotic king brought Gueneviere, but even if she'd been having wet dreams about Hook, she had _twice as much good magic_ , so that shouldn't have prevented her from trying to save Neal, from trying true love's kiss before the possible contribution of the Middle Mists or whatever affect Zelena's cursed kiss might have had.

Even if their love was a complicated and painful mess, Neal was her first true love, Henry's dad, the only best friend she'd had (for more than a couple of days), and someone she'd once envisioned a happy ending with and did truly want to be happy himself.

It came down to her being a coward. Just like she was getting Cleo killed and then assuming her wardrobe and personality less as armor to keep people out as much as a costume to be someone else, because it was easier to be someone else, to pretend to be good and brave than to actually be good and brave.

She'd spent months trying to be both as herself, learning to be a bounty hunter to stay out of jail but learning to do the job for the right reasons.

Lily wasn't the only one who ended up totally fucked up by that spell, always making bad choices, taking the easy way out, no matter how much she wanted to be a better person and do the right thing.

Maybe it was another one of those _Star Wars_ analogies, Emma thought as she put the previous day's smoky clothes back on: complete good was just as corrupting as total evil. Without the balance of darkness to keep the light in check, it was just as corrupting a power that in its self-righteous blindness ultimately served to help darkness. Her parents and their actions certainly seemed to be proof of that as much as anything.

Without the ability to even _feel_ the sort of cruel impulses she was able to experience as the Dark One, all of her good intentions ended up undermined by some natural magical craving for balance that was satisfied by criminality even when she was trying to bring the bad guys in to be held accountable for their actions. She couldn't maintain that sense of justice when she was unconsciously drawn toward bad people to experience bad behavior by proxy. Lily. Neal. Hook. Even Regina.

Neal had reformed, though. And he hadn't done bad things because he himself was inherently bad. He was just a refugee in another world without all of the paper trail bullshit you need to be legit. And he _had_ become legit in spite of that, after leaving her. He'd done good things, helped strangers, because it was the right thing to do, because he cared, not because he wanted to look like a good person. He wasn't pretending for the sake of some social contract. He didn't turn doing good works into some self-centered means to get an expensive apartment and be some disingenuous characiture of someone better, someone he'd hurt.

Looking at the dreamcatcher again, Emma thought of Henry's look of betrayal the night before.

She wouldn't blame him if he wanted as much to do with her now as she'd had with him the last time around; which was about as much interaction as she'd had with her mother in the form of a pep-talk a couple times a year and being otherwise completely focused on her newest costume, her newest fraud, of being some stepford wife-like emotional doormat for a man who could make her forget with sex what an awful person she was even as he made her even worse, the whole messed up 'true love' based on belief thing blackening her heart, filling that emptiness with his evilness. Which was some fucked up irony when Emma supposed another reason she'd so shallowly clung to Hook was her insecurity over her self-worth and ability to be a good person _for real_.

Who else but an obsessive stalker would want to be with a woman who didn't know how to be herself anymore? She didn't even care that being around him made her look like crap, that it _had_ to mean something more than the obvious stated by Hades when trying to put half of her heart into his chest felt like she was dying.

In retrospect, it was obviously some kind of dark magic thing stemming from the toxicity of their relationship. Some kind of weird Dorian Grey thing that kept Hook looking ageless and sexy (or aging handsomely) while she had to use all kinds of magic shit to not look like she was turning into The Red Woman on _Game of Thrones_.

Emma didn't really want to contemplate why _he_ hadn't seemed bothered by either of those, by her increasingly unhealthy appearance and emotionally erratic behavior. But then, it's not like Hook had really known her _at all,_ even the _fake her_ when they got together, because they never talked unless it was trading half-truths and outright lies to either look like better people than they were or to get a self-pity fuck for "honesty". The entirety of their relationship, from beginning to end, was like some all-consuming teenage crush romance with less depth than the kiddy pool she bought Henry in her fake memories of living in Tallahassee.

Of course, Hook was apparently also using some magic back-to-head-hair shit, Emma remembered, so maybe they were both just shallow assholes pretending to be someone else because of abandonment issues. Not that she thought it absolved the pirate of his crimes against countless women _and_ her, though she did think Hook had genuinely believed in the sanctity of their love and that its selfish and consent-issue-riddled foundation was actually romantic.

Though, even there, Emma knew he was right that she shouldered some blame for having met him in the past and started him dreaming about her and leading to the delusional conclusion that they were fated because of a paradox that she made him "fall in love" with her. That he lied and said he didn't remember her was probably as much fearing the truth would cause her to run away again as it was just his default asshole kind of response to cement the fated-ness of their bullshit romance.

The neurosyphilis had probably helped with that on both sides, Emma supposed as she took Neal's room key from the dresser and headed downstairs.

* * *

Tinkerbell was at the counter when Emma entered Granny's and the ex-fairy gave her a nasty look and a brusk, "Rough night?"

"Can I get a coffee to go?" sighed Emma.

Still glowering, Tinkerbell went over to start another pot remarking, "Can I get my home and all my worldly possessions back? No, because they burned up in a magical fire!"

"I said I was sorry," mumbled Emma, adding defensively, "and you did make it worse with your stupid pixie dust! Why the hell would you put that stuff on the stairs?"

"Obviously to keep Hook out so he wouldn't raid my fridge and try to rape me!" Tink shot back. "I was hoping he'd fall down the stairs and break his neck!"

0Frowning, Emma countered, "But I thought you were sort of friends. I mean, didn't you encourage his interest in me?"

"We shagged once in Neverland after Baelfire left, when I was high and depressed," Tink said, "which that creep interpreted as 'friendship' and by 'friendship' mostly the 'benefits' part that he kept pestering me about as being without saying when 'friendship' involves parties of the opposite sex.

"At least this time around you stayed in the present and he didn't develop a wet dream obsession with you that ended our 'friendship' with the bastard trying to give me your bloody cleavage scar," she concluded.

"Neal told you about that, huh?" Emma winced and rubbed at the scar on her left clavicle from getting a mole removed when she was living in New York without her memories.

She'd found out sometime after the whole Underworld thing the basics of the sexual nature of Tink's relationship with Hook and that he'd lied about not remembering her in the past and thus making that connection in the rewritten timeline and thus altering his motives from the start of their meeting from trying to kill her for Cora after raping her for kicks to raping her in revenge and then killing her for getting him drunk and stealing his ship... which over time knowing her in the present transformed from the raping and killing to wanting to make her fall in love with him and then break her heart... to, he believed, being genuinely in love with her.

"I thought he'd be too drunk to remember me," sighed Emma.

"A functional alcoholic for three centuries develops a tolerance to blackouts," Tink snorted. "And while I've got a tolerance to functional assholes, I don't want them breaking my friends' hearts. Neal was my friend, and I know I've fucked that up with the pixie dust thing, but I hoped that if Hook went full perv on you, you'd either realize he was a sexual predator and reconsider giving Neal another chance - or you'd show your true asshole colors and that you weren't worthy of him in the first place and he'd find someone who was instead of risking his life for you.

"I was really hoping for the former, though," Tink admitted. "I'm a romantic at heart and all that kid ever wanted was a family, and I know you wanted that being an orphan and all, so you could have given that to each other. Instead," she glowered, "you rebuffed all of his attempts to apologize and just be _friends_ and _co-parents_ and wallowed in your self-pity and parenting problems Regina style, acting like he didn't even exist, something you continued doing after he died. Your eulogy was utter shit. Your reception was pathetic. You didn't even try to save him, but you magic kissed Hook back from the dead a few days later!

"And according to Baelfire, you apparently didn't do a damn thing to try and change things when you had the past at your disposal other than making Captain Rapist even more obsessed with you," Tink ranted on, "and then you threw away that keychain Bae gave you and replaced it with Hook's inherited 'the only one he didn't kill for but was set with a stone gained by mass murder' ring. Not to mention you welcomed that green witch bitch into your family and repeatedly screwed over Baelfire's father for being the Dark One _even though you were the Dark One and did horrible things_.

"You're a fucking hypocrite, Emma Swan," Tink told her scathingly.

"I didn't throw it away," Emma tried to defend herself. "I did keep it, just like the dreamcatcher. I just couldn't... see it every day and be reminded of the bad choices I made and how the universe fucked up our chance to find Tallahassee. Neal said he wanted me to find it, and how I could do that with someone else and still wear that? It felt like cheating."

"Hiding it so you don't have to be reminded you're doing a bad thing doesn't make it not a bad thing," Tink scoffed. "You think your dad taking off his wedding ring while he was having an affair with your mom under the Curse made what he was doing any less douchey to Kathryn? You had a true love, a soulmate, the father of your kid that you didn't lift a finger to fight for and then went and saved someone who helped ruin his life, who helped turn him into the kind of screwed up teenager who'd leave the girl he loved if someone told him he wasn't good enough for her, because he didn't think anyone would ever choose him, certainly not a princess whose life his father fucked up."

"I know that now," Emma lamented.

"Yeah, well, now doesn't do much good, does it?" Tink countered. "After his parents, and leaving out the other trauma Pan as his goons inflicted on him, Hook's a quarter of the reason Baelfire left you and never looked you for, not even when he knew you were in Storybrooke, but you chose that bastard and you never looked back and you didn't so much back-stabbing shit that I wouldn't be able to even look at you if I was him.

"Which just goes to show what a good person Baelfire - Neal - is," the ex-fairy stated coolly. "And I know I'm not. But I'm also not the Savior, someone who's supposed be on the side of right, fight for people who've got no one to fight for them - the stuff everyone says you did before you broke the Curse and then presto-chango became a shallow little shit just like every other princess."

Grabbing a cup from under the counter, Tink told her coldly, "You disgust me. You didn't even try to honor Neal's memory by telling Henry about him. And you believed some punk-ass joke by a god's impersonation, which is pathetic enough, but you told him you wanted to split your heart for Hook, and you wanted his help? What kind of a selfish cunt does that? Tells the man you helped get killed, who loves you, that you want his help to save a scumbag who banged his mother with your heart instead of giving it to him so, you know, his son could have a father back?"

Glaring, Tinkerbell poured a cup and then added a double shot of espresso.

"Two black eyes on the house," she said, setting the paper cup down. "I'd give you another two, but Granny'd fire me. And right now I'm sleeping on a cot on the laundry room."

"I'm sorry," Emma told her again. "I didn't want to turn out to be a bad person. This whole thing," she gestured to her clothes, "really wasn't maliciously intended. I did want to honor Cleo and stop being so selfish and careless. I really wanted to be the hero Henry believed I was. I just... got carried away with the looking bad-ass part of the act and what everyone was telling me and what felt good and I forgot what was important."

The ex-fairy sighed. "Look, I do sort of get it, okay? I wasn't a real good fairy either. I shirked my responsibilities and got a bit of a... problem with pixie dust. I didn't want to be an addict. I really wanted to prove that I could be a good fairy, that I could help people, but doing it by stealing dust and making up some bullshit that I was leading Regina to a new true love so she'd stop moping over her dead one and that would count as doing a good deed? Yeah, that was fucked up and it made a lot of people's lives suck in the long-term, yours included. I saved her life only to ruin it, and it took me years in Neverland to realize that, to get why the Blue Fairy, glittery bitch that she is, exiled me.

"You can't do something deceitful like that - use people and their grief - or your own - to build yourself up as a good person, a hero," said Tink. "It just makes you an even bigger asshole."

"I know."

Sighing, Emma paid for the coffee and headed out front, stopping short when she came upon Hook sitting at the front table looking pathetic... and angry when he turned at the sound of the bell to recognize her.

"If it isn't Miss Prohibition!" he accused.

"Who told you to store your rum in the Library's attic? Why the hell didn't you have your creepy frat parties on your ship?"

"Because the Harbor Patrol is run by a bloody thief who steals off unattended ships," Hook shot back, "which you'd know if you ever did your job as Sheriff. Ruby's investigating. She really is quite good. If she hadn't declared herself Lesbian, I'd totally be into her now."

"I can't deal with you this morning, Hook," Emma told him.

"You burned my things, Swan!"

"Well, you're lucky it wasn't your stupid ship that you 'gave up' to shag me! And I think you leaving me and my mother to die in a dungeon trumps me burning your stupid rum! Plus you gave me syphilis!"

"You're just upset that discovering our relation means you can no longer publicly lust after me."

"No, I'm upset that I was so shallow that I lusted after you because you were nothing but a hot piece of ass with an accent who conveniently distracted me from all the shit in my life I didn't want to deal with. If I wasn't sure before, seeing your fat-ass self now open-mouth chewing Mexican food has revealed just how disgustingly shallow I was, and I what horrible message I sent to my kid, never mind my other mistake of nature Omen-esque spawn whose previous existence I'm trying to block out of my memory completely."

" _The Omen_... Was that the one with that mischievous, rambunctious kid, Damien?"

Emma groaned. "God, you really are a psychopath!"

"And you are definitely disinherited now. You aren't getting my buried treasure map," Hook declared.

Emma rolled her eyes. "The other you told me that was a lie you boasted about when we met to appear more attractive."

"Yes, well, I lied. Probably on account of learning you were a no account criminal loser your entire life and after that thing with Neal and the twenty grand in watches worrying you were a gold-digger who'd seduced me with magic in the past and would kill me in my sleep in the present!"

Emma glared. "A gold-digger. Really? Have you been listening to Kanye West songs again?"

"He has a great deal of wisdom to share on the fairer sex in this strange world," retorted Hook. "And you are a trifling friend indeed when I'm in need, Swan," he huffed.

Emma snorted. "And I can tell by your charm and your arm that you've got a flock of stupid little forest hoes who'll happily let you get them drunk. But here, have my coffee," she concluded handing him her cup.

Hook scowled at her retreat, but sipped the coffee which he contemplated uncertainly on his way into Granny's. "New roast of beans?" he asked.

Tink raised a brow. "No. My urine."

Hook choked. "What the bloody hell!? That's disgusting!"

"Well, Emma was supposed to drink it, though you're still number three on my Most Hated list after Blue Tits," Tink told him.

"For what? What did I ever do to you!? And you got me pixie stoned. That's not cool," Hook accused. "I kissed Ruby. And she's _gay_."

Tink's brows shot up. "She is?"

"Well, bi, I suppose, but she declared she's now in a women-only phase or something because men smell and don't want to talk about being on the rag," said Hook. "Which I think Swan must be."

"I know, right?" scoffed Tink. "Thank Merlin's unfortunately hot murdered balls that fairies don't menstruate. I mean, can you imagine dealing with that in a tight-ass sequined tutu?"

"I'd rather not. Now I've lost my appetite."

"Good, you could do with losing some weight."

Hook glared, then got distracted when Ruby entered in a Graham-ish outfit with a badge on her belt. He greeted, "If it isn't Wynona Earp. I'll leave you lovely lasses to talk about woman times stuff - and disinfect the espresso machine."

"I didn't pee in the _machine_ , you idiot!" Tink called after him.

"You're peeing in customers' coffee now?" asked Ruby. "What the hell, Tink? Granny'll be... well... pissed!"

"It was just Emma's," she defended and Ruby relaxed.

"Oh, well, I get that."

"What is _wrong_ with her?" Tink asked. "I mean, she's clearly got some messed up childhood shit or Pan couldn't have played her so well, but, _seriously_?"

Ruby shrugged. "Besides being related to my deadbeat former bestie who's related to that fat douche? Who knows. Wanna go out for drinks tonight?"

Tink beamed. "Hell yes!"

* * *

AN: In watching Season 4 of OITNB, I see Piper and my Emma similarly. They are both women (with shitty parents and who went to prison for a stupid fuckup) who deluded themselves that they were heroes, did despicable things with all kinds of self-righteous justifications that were really selfish and about being needed/wanted/respected. Then the badass act leads to self-ruination. And somehow we're still supposed to root for these selfish fucktards who have destroyed lives just to look important or have the upper hand in a seriously dysfunctional relationship. (You could argue that if Piper hadn't fucked Alex over in revenge she wouldn't have ended up in a position to start that panty business, so she wouldn't have been targeted by "The Dominicans", so there would have been no escalation with the guards in her fake anti-gang movement, which would mean no searches and thus no forcing that stanky inmate to stand on the table, thus no reenactment which lead to Washington's death).

Emma's found herself in a similar situation. Her actions, however unintentional, hurt people who trusted her or if they did deserve it, others who didn't got caught up in that escalation. And even though that happened, for the most part, in a timeline that no longer exists, bits and pieces of that were made known, particularly during Ingrid's curse, and now people who looked up to Emma have had their rose-colored glasses shattered and aren't sure they can trust her to protect them while she's wallowing in guilt, in suffering for what her pride wrought. Emma is, you could say, over that metaphorical stove trying to turn her swastika into a window with the few friends she has left... but asking herself not if God exists, but why God let everything go to shit and then gave her a responsibility she was in no way equipped to handle.

Next up: Mr. Quackington is released into the wild.


	81. Drastic Voyage

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX**

 **DRASTIC VOYAGE  
**

"Why are we out here? It's bloody freezing!" Hook complained as they stood on the deck of the _Jolly Roger_ with a gathering of Emma's family and friends.

"It's some sort of therapy," Regina grated out, rolling her eyes as Emma cradled a stupid rubber ducky at the aft end of the ship and trying to ignore Snow's nervous fidgeting, David playing Candy Crush on his phone, and Tinkerbell clearly trying to look up Belle's extremely short skirt every time the wind gusted.

Perhaps she should go check on Henry and his sea sickness... or she could just go over and punch Emma Swan in the face. Her concern for her son was currently at odds with her old nasty habit of wanting to kill Emma... or at least punch her in the face.

She'd been holding back ever since... well ever since she last punched her back before killing Graham - which she did semi-regret since he was at least an excellent Sheriff who didn't let the town go to complete shit. Of course, there was the violence that broke out during the Shattered Sight Curse, but that was basically a fugue state with no after-the-fact satisfaction, so it didn't really count. Which meant she was still itching to slug that blonde bimbo right in her stupid pretty face!

The only reason Regina hadn't was A) Henry would be upset with her, and B) a belief that Emma was actually a good and honest person who deserved her stupid "Savior" title, so her violent yearnings were not really deserved.

Now though, after the events of several nights ago, the former Evil Queen was reevaluating not only how sorry she was for any physical assault that took place while under that barefoot ice nutter's spell, but how legitimate her reasons to _not_ punch Emma really were.

"This is so stupid," Regina concluded while adjusting her coat against the chilly ocean breeze.

"It's not stupid!" Snow huffed. "Archie said it would help Emma get over her trauma if she had a formalized ceremony to let go of her toy."

"I know who I'd like to let go in a formalized ceremony with my four inch heal up her ass," grumbled Belle, blue eyes set on Emma in a frigid glare.

"Why are _you_ here?" asked Hook. "You hate all of us. Are you planning to sabotage my ship and kills us all?"

"I don't hate _all_ of you," Belle retorted. "I wouldn't kill Henry. Or Neal. He's died enough times. You, on the other hand..."

"So you _have_ sabotaged my ship!?"

"Why would I bother?" scoffed Belle. "It's more fun watching you die of diabetes."

"I do not have diarrhea!"

" _Diabetes_ , you fucktard. Something you should have Dr. Whale check you for before you fall into a non-magical coma."

"Yes, well, I'd rather be in a coma than carrying the spawn of the Dark One."

Belle startled, confused. "Excuse me?"

"Nealfire said in that other timeline you and the Crocodile had a little bundle of joy, that you got in the family way before you lot came to The Underworld to save me."

Crossing her arms, Belle retorted, "Yes, well, I doubled up on birth control after 'Nealfire' informed me of Rumple's contract with that creepy racist Healer who had clearly co-opted the culture of one of the marginalized indigenous peoples of our world to appear more adept at his trade by playing on the socially indoctrinated racist beliefs of the white Enchanted Forest populace that healing skills are the only redeeming quality of those nearly extinct tribes and somehow by virtue of their being endangered that much more mysteriously powerful."

"Yes, well, maybe they are!" Hook defended. "Not Chief is helping me with my hair issues."

"You call him 'Not Chief'! That's totally racist!"

"It's the name he wants to go by because names have power and he doesn't want anyone having power over him with his real name," Hook argued, "which is a real thing in our world _and_ this one, for your information. I do read!"

"You can read?" quipped Regina.

Hook glared at her and Belle huffed, unable to refute the pirate's argument.

"Maybe this is a good thing, what happened," Snow tried to justify. "Letting go of Mr. Quackington might be good for her."

"It's called Mr. _Quackington_?" Tink giggled.

"I can't decide if that's adorable or nauseating," sighed Regina.

"What I want to know," interjected Hook, "is why anyone would have a toy _duck_ to _bathe_ with. Ducks are horrible creatures. Besides defecating everywhere and the incessant quacking during mating season, have you ever _seen_ them mate?"

"True," nodded Tink. "All those cute little fluffy yellow chicks are rape babies. Bet people don't tell their kids _that_ when they go to feed them. The birds and the bees and the duck gang raping."

"Mother nature is a wondrous thing," said Hook as he drank from his flask.

Tinkerbell punched him in the arm. "Only you would think using ducks as a legitimization of rape is a 'wondrous thing'. You are such an _asshole_."

"Hey, why don't you go punch Swan? She's the one who burned your house down! Also, why are you even here?"

"I'm considering it," retorted the ex-fairy, "but you've been an asshole for three hundred years. Emma's only been one for thirty at the most. And because Ruby is here investigating the Harbor Patrol who are possibly using mermaids to smuggle contraband into Storybrooke and I'm going to join her on a stakeout later and we're going to shag."

"Too much information," grumbled David.

"Not enough information!" countered Hook who jumped out of the way to avoid getting punched by the ex-fairy.

"All of you shut up!" Belle hissed. "I can't hear Emma's stupid ceremonial speech so I can make fun of it later!"

Emma was now standing by "the plank" now with her rubber ducky and tearfully proclaiming, "You were a good friend, Mr. Quackington. I know I never said it. I acted like it was stupid to need you, but you were always there when I got scared as a kid, when there was no one else. But I see now that I'm grown up that it was kind of unhealthy to use you to block out a lot of stuff instead of dealing with it. So that's why I have to let you go. Safe travels. I hope you find a new home and a family who loves you!"

As she dropped the rubber ducky overboard, Ruby joined them from down bellow and snorted, "That stupid duck will find its way to that massive garbage pile in the ocean I saw on that Discovery Channel show that time the remote batteries died, probably. Which this ship should be in. It smells like pirate BO and seagull farts."

"That's not my fault! I don't have a crew to clean it!" defended Hook.

"We should totally push her overboard, right?" Belle interjected. "Whose with me!"

"Okay, you really need to get back together with Rumple," ordered Regina. "I dislike you both intensely, but you're both less annoying and prone to murdering people when you're having sex with each other. Just stay on your doubled-up birth control and everyone's happy."

"He was trying to get his Dark One magic back!"

Hook shrugged. "So what? Doesn't he always do that? And didn't he kick the habit eventually in that other timeline? I mean, otherwise, my evil spawn couldn't have spawned a resurrected Dark One spawn. So there must be some hope that he stayed sober."

"Or he died," Tinkerbell shrugged. "Emma was never clear on who was still alive other than Captain Oedipus."

"Shut up! I didn't _want_ to sleep with my mum!"

"This is boring," Regina declared. "I'm going home."

She poofed herself away.

"Damn it," sighed David, "I was going to ask if she could take me with her."

Snow punched him in the arm. "We're trying to be supportive!"

"Emma doesn't want us here! We're the ones who traumatized her! Archie specifically said not to come, but you wouldn't listen! I thought it was just the syphilis making your irrationally prone to stupid decisions that cause your loved one's pain, but it seems to be an actual character flaw you inherited from your father!"

Snow punched his other arm.

"Stop it!"

"Make me!"

Tinkerbell sighed. "Damn, I only spiked the rum with pixie dust to see what Regina would do. She must have poured hers overboard or something..."

"You spiked my rum!?" Hook howled while Emma's parents continued bickering like five-year-olds. "How much of it?"

"The two barrels in the armory that you have fake labeled as gun powder?"

"But that's all I have left! The rest was in the Library!"

"Oops?"

"I'll show you 'oops'!"

Hook tried to strangle Tinkerbell. Ruby tried to pull him off while Belle, Snow and David just shrugged. Neal wandered over, giving Emma time alone to watch her toy float away, and told them, "You are all an embarrassment. What's wrong with you? Emma is trying to deal with actual shit and you goons are bitching and throwing punches."

"Tink spiked the rum!" Hook huffed.

"Of course she did," groaned Neal and he glared at the ex-fairy. "You're going to rehab!"

"No no no! I ain't got the time!"

"Are you quoting an Amy Winehouse song?" asked Snow. "You realize she died of an overdose, right?"

"You really do need help," Belle agreed. "You're half the reason I lost my books. Never mind selling drugs to forest hobos. These two morons," she gestured to The Charmings, "might not have slaughtered all those people if the lot of them weren't high on pixie dust you cut with rat poison."

"My bad?"

"We are not morons!" Snow growled.

"I say put her in the brig," exclaimed Hook.

"No, that's cruel and unusual punishment," argued Ruby. "I told you, the ship smells. I think the bilge has a leak or something."

"Bugger!" Hook complained. "Those bloody Harbor patrol mermaid mules!"

Emma finally joined them, refusing to look at her parents. "Where's Henry?" she asked.

"He was queasy. He went to lay down," reported Snow.

"Really? I didn't see him."

Just then the ship lurched dangerously and a giant green-glowing tentacle wrapped itself around the ship!

While everyone screamed, Tink sighed, "Yep, she tossed it overboard..."

"REHAB!" everyone yelled at Tinkerbell.

David grabbed the harpoon gun -only to find it was rusted and useless.

"WHAT THE HELL, HOOK!?"

"I HAVE NO CREW AND IT RAINS ALL THE BLOODY TIME HERE!" Hook shouted.

"What are you waiting for!?" Belle demanded of Emma. "Poof us out of here!"

"I can't!" Emma cried, gesturing to her no-magic cuff.

"So have Neal take the damn thing off!"

"He did!" Emma shouted back, "but I was worried my magic would go crazy so I had Henry put it back on!"

"I HATE THIS FAMILY!" Ruby yelled before turning into a wolf and trying to attack one of the tentacles... which just turned her into a green glowing rabid monstrosity that then turn on the rest of them.

While David jabbed at Ruby with the harpoon, trying to keep her at bay, Hook and Neal tried to wrench the ship free of the monster, but all they succeeded in doing was getting thrown into the masthead as the wheel spun.

Belle frantically tried to get a cell signal to call Rumple - or Regina - only to lose her new iPhone over the side of the ship.

Emma cried out, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" in horror as the sea monster ate Mr. Quackington.

"You're right," sighed Snow to David, "we should have listened to Archie."

"So, for once in you're life you're admitting that _I_ was right?"

"Shut up, David, and keep stabbing our former best friend before she mauls us to death or turns us into Incredible Hulks! I don't care what Henry says, he's a really stupid superhero with a really awful super power!"

* * *

"Aren't you supposed to be at that ceremony with your mother?" Archie asked upon finding Henry eating a grilled cheese at Granny's while reading a Hulk comic.

"I was, for like five minutes," Henry shrugged. "Then I said I felt sick and Mom sent me to lay down at which point I used this translocation charm that Grandpa Gold made for Belle in the case of an emergency to come back here."

"Henry, stealing may be in your blood, but that doesn't mean you should give into the impulse!"

Suddenly Leroy burst into the diner and shouted, "EVERYONE, COME QUICK! THERE'S A GIANT GLOWING GREEN SEA MONSTER IN THE HARBOR!"

Archie gave Henry a nasty look and the teen sighed and muttered, "Oh farts."

* * *

"Emmmmaaaaaa! Nooooooooooo!" Snow cried when the sea monster grabbed her daughter and pulled her into the water.

"Are you going to jump in after her?" asked Belle as the sea continued to froth, tentacles slamming against the ship and ripping pieces off.

"I don't see you jumping in!" Tink shot at Belle.

"She's not my blood relation."

"What's wrong with you people!?" Neal snapped, snatching the harpoon from David and jumping overboard.

"What the hell, man!?" David shouted, "that was my only protection against-"

Mutant Green Wolf Ruby slammed into them all... and as Hook screamed like a little girl certain he was about to get his throat ripped out, Ruby transformed back into a normal-sized not glowing wolf... for some reason without her clothes.

"Why are you naked?" asked David.

"Pixie dust spiked squid toxin must have burned 'em off," Ruby answered, unconcerned. "It is cold out here, though."

"Not _that_ cold," said Hook who had a very obvious erection.

Belle 'accidentally' knee'd him in the crotch while getting up and Hook yelped and observed, "The sea monster is gone! It must have transformed back to it's normal self too."

"Hey, was it just the drug-filled haze," Ruby asked, looking around, "or did Emma and Neal fall overboard?"

"Technically Emma was dragged overboard by the monster and Neal jumped in after her."

"Do you think it transformed back before or after trying to eat them?" wondered Tink. "And if it _did_ eat them first, would it have time to digest them with its toxins or would they explode out of it as it shrunk?"

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Belle snapped. "Neal is your friend and he could be dead!"

"I'm a drug addict and a fairy who by our nature are a few test questions short of being bona fide psychopaths. We don't do empathy well."

Snow burst into tears. "We failed her again, Charming!"

David patted his wife on the back. "I'm sure they fell down a convenient portal or something and will be fine."

Suddenly the silence was cut through by the blaring of a conch shell and they looked down at a familiar mermaid from Neverland. "A portal to me my sister's dinner table, bitches! We're going to feast on your stupid Savior and then make necklaces from her teeth! _Suck it, human trash_!"

" _I'm not human_!" Tink argued. " _And I thought that night in the lagoon meant something_!"

" _I was stealing your pixie dust, you stupid fairy_!" the mermaid shouted back. " _I only have a human vagina once a year and even I know how to use it better than you_!"

She gave them the finger before vanishing under the water.

"Bloody Harbor Patrol bints!" cried Hook. "COME BACK HERE WITH MY BILGE PUMP!... _And also my great granddaughter... and my stepson! I will get my revenge on you_!"

"We all know you only care about your ship, Hook," sighed Belle, "but you get points for pretending."

"I thought it was fairly convincing."

"Mermaids are going to eat our baby girl!" sniffled Snow. "And not in whatever disgusting inter-species way that bitch did with Tinkerbell!"

"Hey, it was a beautiful moment!" Tink argued. "And I absolutely know what to do with a vagina!"

"You did seem to have a hang of it from what I saw of that magical night at the lagoon," agreed Hook.

Tink punched him again.

* * *

AN: Remember that _Archer_ episode when they did a homage to _Fantastic Voyage_ and exploded that guy? LOL!

Next up: What have Ariel and Eric been up to? Why was Eric spinning her around in that episode like they were just reunited when early in that episode it was already revealed that happened months ago? And will Henry be grounded or will he just get away with this bullshit with an half-assed speech from one of his parents like he does everything else?


	82. The Life Aquatic

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN**

 **THE LIFE AQUATIC**

Neal came to with sand in his mouth, fishy smell invading his nostrils, and an unnerving feeling of deja vu before peeling his eyelids open to discover a very naked and what he would assume to be "waxed" woman crouching over him if not for the faint scale-like scarring on said woman's crotch.

As he was reaching the conclusion that this was a mermaid - one he vaguely remembered from Neverland - in human transformation and aware that he was rather chilled in his wet clothes, Neal heard Emma complaining, "Let me go! I didn't do anything to you!"

He then found himself hauled roughly upwards, dragged up the beach, and dropped beside Emma against a tree where two mer _men_ with what he assumed was not an STD on their junk, tied him up beside her.

"Now that you're cozy," the mermaid stated, "I have business to attend to."

Nodding to the two mermen, she said, "Make sure they don't try anything stupid. Our Queen means to have words with the blonde one."

The dark-haired, vaguely Regina-ish looking mermaid sneered at Emma, "I should have skinned you alive and fed you to the sharks for letting your friend turn me to wood and your pirate throw me overboard. A person is no better than the company they keep, whore!"

Before Emma could form a rebuttal, the mermaid waded into the water, removed her bracelet, and dove into the gray ocean.

"So...," Neal asked the two mermen, "did you go for the gold chains because the bracelets are girlie, or were you just going for the Jersey Shore vibe?"

"Shut up, human trash!" said one.

"Who is your 'Queen', anyway?" Emma demanded. "I thought Poseidon's wife was dead and he hadn't remarried?"

"We don't recognize that apostate," stated the other.

Neal groaned as he remembered Poseidon and Ursula talking about the complicated political situation that resulted in her exile. "Oh great, we've been kidnapped by that loony mermaid cult! _You_ guys are the ones _swimming_ contraband into Storybrooke?"

"And infiltrating your ranks, human scum!" laughed the first.

The second shoved him and hissed, "You shouldn't tell them that!"

"Why? Our Queen will just kill them, anyway!"

"Well now they won't tell us anything, idiot!"

" _You're both idiots_!" snapped familiar voice in a very unfamiliar tone.

* * *

While Henry sat miserably in 'time out', which was hugely embarrassing for a teenager, and rubbing his sore arm, Regina used blood magic and Cora's globe to pinpoint Emma and Neal to Hangman's Island in The Enchanted Forest.

"Must be their base of operations," said Hook. "It's always been a smuggler's paradise, but I remember overhearing some of Blackbeard's crew mentioning they were leery of stopping there anymore because of mermaid attacks. Nearly ran them into rocks after they left that poncy prince there."

"Eric," Snow informed. "His name is _Eric_. You helped reunite him with Ariel, remember?"

"Oh... er... right."

Tink punched him in the arm. "No you didn't, you arsehole. That was Zelena impersonating Ariel to con the rest of them and curse your lips to take away Emma's magic. The redheaded idiot came to you for help in The Enchanted Forest to find her boyfriend who'd been left to die somewhere. Blackbeard offered to tell her where, but you wanted your ship back, so you tossed him to the sharks and left Eric to starve to death and the only reason he didn't is that Ariel saved Blackbeard."

"Oh... er... right."

Snow stomped on Hook's foot and he yelped. "You 'arsehole'!" she growled. "You were in the room when Emma did that mirror magic! You really did let us all believe you did something selfless and heroic just to get in my daughter's pants!"

Hook glared back at her. "Pi-rate. What part of that have you idiots _never_ understood?"

"Careful. Half of that idiocy comes from your bloodline!" Snow reminded.

"Damn it," Hook grumbled.

"Be that as it almost certainly is," sighed Regina, "can we get back to finding the other two idiots of your idiot gang? Not that I'd miss them terribly, but they are Henry's biological parents and I feel obligated that they should endure the suffering of raising of a teenager for bringing him into the world."

"And Neal might be your-"

"Shut up, Charming," Regina cut off the Prince. "Now, we'll have to mount yet another rescue mission. Are we comfortable using the shriveled nard wand? Or should we try the Black Fairy's wand that we all know Tinkerbell has shoved up her-"

"I do not!" Tinkerbell huffed.

"Then why are you walking so weird?" asked Belle.

"It's my duck impersonation. I'm practicing to make fun of Emma after we save her from the evil mermaid kabal."

"That's rather mean," considered Hook. "I'm all for kicking a man or women when they're down, but even familial obligations to protect my kin aside-"

"You handed your stepson to a child abuser and killed your own father for naming your half brother after your older brother who was a mass-murderer," said Belle.

" _Be that as it may_ ," huffed Hook, "merpeople are even worse than Pan or even that freak Felix. What that sea wench and her sisters did to my navigator makes Pan's right hand creep buggering my poor cabin boy seem tame. The lad did actually throw himself to the mermaids when he couldn't take it anymore... which I reckon he regretted before he finally drown."

"Hold on," David interjected, "you're saying Felix sodomized your cabin boy?"

"Aye, he was a real psycho that one. I mean, Pan was a demon, but his blonde minion just wasn't right, what he did to little boys. Even I never ravished a wench younger than fifteen, and even then it was only if the girl was lying about her age to sneak into a pub."

"So, you handed Neal over to a _child molester_?" Snow gasped.

"Well, to be fair, Felix did seem to prefer them a tad younger than the lad, so-"

Snow stomped on Hook's other foot. "You are so disgusting! I can't believe I was going to be supportive of Emma dating you! And even worse that we're related!"

Hook smirked, "Must be hereditary then, you throwing other people's kids down portals. Putting yours in a box in a portal. And didn't you basically let Neal wander off to his death and then try to name your replacement swan baby after him to absolve yourselves of any guilt in the matter?"

"Damn it," grumbled David, "he does have a point."

"He does _not_ have a point!" huffed Snow. "Those are entirely different situations!"

"Can we get back," Regina cut off the bickering Charmings, "to exactly what kind of danger Emma and her overly chill baby daddy are in?"

Hook answered, "I'd say a high probability of stingray spine torture, kelp-related strangulation, water boarding, and taking a drugged puffer fish and sticking it up the arse, then waiting for it to wake up, freak out, and-"

"I don't mean the disgusting details!" Regina growled. "I meant what these group of smugglers are up to, Captain Fatass!"

Hook pouted. "You weren't even trying with that one."

Belle interjected, "Maybe Smee saw something? He does have a lobster boat."

"Or he's running the smuggling ring and sabotaging the _Jolly Roger_ out of spite," suggested Hook. "Of course, he'd have to be intelligent for that, which I don't think he really is..."

"Forget their motives," argued David. "We need to mount a rescue operation. I vote for the Black Fairy's wand. If the Blue Fairy is shady, maybe it's not so bad. I mean, at least it can't have worse consequences than the ballsack one."

"Although Neal did die after he helped Tinkerbell use it," Snow remembered.

"Neal died because you were a couple of selfish bitches," Belle scoffed. "I could have just as easily been the dead one. He was just holding the key when that stupid candle tricked us. Stop trying to pretend that wasn't a disgustingly selfish thing to do that further destroyed your daughter's and grandson's happiness!"

"Okay, we can talk about that later," sighed Snow, "but using that wand to kill Pan's Shadow _did_ bring the Blue Fairy back, and if _she's_ really a villain-"

"They're all villains," Regina grated out. "Have none of you figured that out yet? There are no _real_ heroes in any of our 'stories'. Just assholes who pretend to be heroes and dupe other people into thinking they're the good guys. Belle is right that actual heroes don't do the selfish shit you two have done."

Regina waved a hand at Belle, "But just because I agree with you on that point doesn't mean I think _you're_ a good person, _French._ Don't get me started on your con job to get yourself indentured to the Dark One to figure out how to use his powers for 'good'. Or how you let that girl fall off a cliff. Or trying to stab your lover in the neck. Or that whole ridiculous thing with Gaston and Ogre torture after your mother had just been eaten by Ogres. Hypocrite much?"

"Torture is wrong under all circumstances," Belle hissed, "which I'd think you would appreciate after being tortured yourself _by Hook_!"

"Hey, I was only a voyeur!"

"You felt me up with your hook, you sicko!" Regina glared. "If Greg and Tamara hadn't had you by your balls, you'd have torn off the buttons on my blouse and 'ravaged' me on that table."

"Perhaps," shrugged Hook, "but I wouldn't have enjoyed it. My heart belonged to another."

"I hope you mean Milah," David told him, "because if you were considering raping a woman while pining for my daughter, I'll _cut off your balls right now, Hook!_ "

"Enough talk about balls, real or metaphorical!" Snow exclaimed. "We need to save Emma before she's eaten by mermaids like that Ogre chowed down on Belle's mother!"

"HEY!" Belle howled. "What the hell, woman!?"

"I'm sorry," Snow told her, "but Regina's right. Your torture-related views are stupid. She was being tortured by a cult for useless information. Your boytoy was torturing a bloodthirsty creature to scare your community into raising an army to defend themselves because they refused to acknowledge the Ogre threat at their doorstep."

"Although," mused Ruby, "if attacking the castle and eating the lady of the land wasn't enough to convince them, why would that work?"

While Belle threw her and Snow nasty looks, Regina scoffed, "Obviously everyone hated that family and wanted Ogres to eat them. Gaston probably helped them get in and when they failed to eat the whole family decided to try marrying into it instead. I met him at a party once. Serious psychopath with genocidal tendencies."

"You're one to talk about genocide," scoffed Snow.

"That was mass murder," Regina corrected. "I killed that town of people for being traitors. I'd never target a race or species. That's just sick. All my murdering has very personal reasons."

Henry chimed in, "It's seriously sad when _that_ is this family's justification for murder. 'At least I only kill people for my own personal gain, not the color of their skin or their religion'. You all suck and I'm not sorry I stole Belle's charm!"

"Even if mermaids eat your parents in a not sexy way?" asked Hook.

"Ariel will save them," Henry stated.

* * *

Ariel walked into view, not wearing her billowy dress of the fashion favored by Eric's kingdom, but what looked like the mermaid version of a dominatrix outfit... or if The Evil Queen had a super sexy/scary wetsuit made of black and purple fish scales and adorned with very sharp sea urchin spines.

" _Ariel_?" Emma sputtered, confused. "But... you love humans. Eric-"

"Was necessary to take down his kingdom," Ariel boasted. "They have the most ships and commit the most atrocities against our people. We do not honor the trade treaties that Poseidon secretly made with them that stand against the Goddess Ursula, our True Mother, the ancestor he and his daughter betray."

"They lead sailors to their deaths," Neal pointed out. "I don't see how that's a betrayal."

"It's pathetically small offerings when we need to take back the sea!" snapped Ariel.

Confused and feeling betrayed herself, Emma uttered, "I thought Eric was your true love. I saw you, with mirror magic. You were running into each other's arms... How could you do that to him? He's a good man."

" _Was_ a good man until I stabbed him in the throat with the crab fork I stole at his ball. I had to seduce him, to marry him in his people's custom, to gain my right to the throne," Ariel explained. "And now we will sink that island into the sea and make our own Atlantis! That's where your magic comes in, Savior!"

"You were never friends with my mother," Emma realized. "You were using her all along."

"As well as her step mother," nodded Ariel. "No mermaid could ever be that _stupid_ without being eaten by sharks as a child. Only an imbecile like your mother wouldn't question the absurdity of a mermaid wanting to be human _and then_ pining silently after being cursed, never mind believing a human woman was a sea goddess," she scoffed. "Snow White was the perfect mark.

"That whole bit summoning Ursula was intentional, of course," the redhead explained, "as I knew Regina was listening and would impersonate the Goddess to be rid of Snow White. I needed to get into Eric's kingdom. Losing my voice was a setback in that respect, but on the other hand, being exiled by Poseidon for my affliction gave me ample opportunity to travel to other realms like Neverland and spread the Good Word to my sisters who had been taken captive by Pan. When the Dark One freed them by killing that whiny teenage boy, they joined me, and now that Eric's kingdom is ours, all we have to do is sink it using the magical kickback from destroying your silly little town!"

Neal sighed and suggested, "You forgot to go 'muahahahaha'."

" _Muhahahaha_!" laughed Ariel.

Emma slumped miserably against the tree. " _The Little Mermaid_ was my favorite Disney movie... well, I pretty much hated all the other ones with the princess theme. I thought at least _that one_ was accurate."

"Please," scoffed Ariel. "Walt Disney was just a more grandiose hack than his successor. That Apprentice was a fool to think he could ever find a mortal from that world who wouldn't succumb to the seductive magic of The Quill. Disney used it to make himself rich and famous just like his predecessors going back to the Brothers Grimm. Very few accurately recorded the history of our realms. It just doesn't inspire quite the avid readership when the mermaid is a stalker who makes a deal to infiltrate a kingdom to seduce a prince only to have him toss her out for his actual human true love, someone he actually knows, thus resulting in the mermaid's soul being ripped from her body and cast into the sea to haunt it for an eternity.

"FYI, I killed that bitch who actually rescued Eric from the shipwreck just so that wouldn't happen," concluded Ariel with a smirk.

"You're straight up crazy!" groaned Emma.

"Well, maybe it's the shit-ton of pollution in the Land Without Magic sea that I had to swim through to be reunited with my 'true love' that did it," Ariel shot back. "I understand mercury drove that hat maker nutty and, news flash, your mother was also an idiot to believe that my people are vegetarian. What does she think we eat, kelp and plankton? And that we make up snappy musical numbers with the shellfish?"

"So... 'Under the Sea' was all a lie?" Emma asked, looking ready to start crying.

"Well, I did have a pet crab named 'Sebastian' as a child. Then I ate him deep-fried on an abalone shell stuffed with sea urchin roe," shrugged Ariel.

"Wait," Neal had to ask, "how do you fry anything if you live under water? Is there merpeople magic that makes fire work underwater? Like on _Sponge Bob_?"

"You watch _Sponge Bob_?" asked Emma, amused.

"Well, only when stoned. I knew a guy in Central Park who sold some really good pot, and-"

"Both of you shut up!" Ariel snapped, "or I'll chop you up and feed you to the sea sponges!"

"I thought you needed my magic?" countered Emma.

" _After_ I use you for your magic, Savior," the mermaid grated out. "Calypso's cunt, you're as stupid as your mother!"

"Yeah, well, you should get yourself some Vagisil. Yours smells like fish!" Emma taunted.

Ariel slapped her and declared, "You think you're so clever and superior, but the supremacy of your species is a lie. I will bring the truth to all the realms that you humans, especially the ones brought here from _that_ world, like your _son_ , have been screwing us over for centuries, manipulating our lives to make them into _stories_. We are taking back our stories by taking back our seas!"

* * *

AN: An evil Ariel? I couldn't help myself. Her character on the show is just _so fucking stupid_. She's more mentally challenged than retcon Snow White, and with also stupid Cinderella and Aurora, I needed at least one "princess" only _pretending_ to be a fem Forest Gump obsessed with marrying a cute prince and having babies. Besides which, the original story of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, which Ariel recounts here, is not a 'happily ever after' story. Ariel is a creepy stalker, Eric is already in love with a princess who nurses him back to health, and when Ariel can't hoodwink Eric into falling in love with her instead, her deal with Ursula to get legs results in her body being obliterated and she haunts the sea forever while Eric and his princess get married and live happily ever after!

Next up: Rescue mission or bust?


	83. It's All Mermish to Me

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT**

 **IT'S ALL MERMISH TO ME**

"... Ariel will save them."

"Oh, Kid," interjected a strange woman from the entrance, "you're a bit of an idiot, aren't you?"

Regina was the first to hiss out, "Who the hell are you?"

"Don't recognize me with legs? I'm still pulling splinters out of my scales, bitch," said the mermaid.

" _You_ ," David growled and pulled his sword, holding it to her throat.

"Please, you already tried that, Prince soon-to-be-chum. You're too pussy-whipped to actually commit murder when you're in your right mind... or heart, as it were," the mermaid shot back.

She amended with a smirk, "You can call me Miranda. I'll be your hostage taker this evening."

"You and what army, fish bitch?" scoffed Hook.

In response, a number of seemingly random forest-dwelling people that no one had paid much mind to or bothered to do a census of stood up and pulled up the sleeves or tugged down the collars of their musty Enchanted Forest garb to reveal fancy shell-bedazaled jewelry.

" _Damn it_."

"We infiltrated your little kingdom," explained Miranda. "Your curse," she nodded to Snow White, "was the perfect opportunity to insert our agents. And now, it's almost time to execute our plan!"

"And what plan is that?" asked Snow, dubiously.

"To sink this town into the ocean, of course!"

"Exactly how do you propose to do that?" asked Hook.

"With this," hissed the mermaid, pulling from her pocket the glowing blue Eye of the Storm gem. "Thanks ever so much for throwing out your brother's ring, by the way. Now this baby is complete!"

Regina tried to conjure a ball of fire behind her back where she'd moved against the counter, but she found a trident pointed at her by a merman.

"I wouldn't, queenie," he warned, "unless you want a dose of dreamshade."

"Exactly how are you going to... activate that thing?" Belle spoke up.

"Magical blood sacrifice, of course," shrugged Miranda. "We're going to bleed The Savior all over Prince Eric's kingdom and use that fancy well of yours as a conduit. As Storybrooke's magic is violently returned to its rightful world, both will be pulled down into the depths."

"Why?" Snow demanded. "Why are you doing this? Is this some sort of... revenge against Ariel for choosing to be human?"

Miranda scoffed. "I see that wormy apple doesn't fall far in your bloodline, does it? No, honey, Ariel's our leader and she already killed that fool and tossed his corpse to the sharks. I mean, seriously, why would any woman want to be with some poncy creep who has a two minute dance with her and then wants to get her alone a boat for a year? Maybe that's how relationships work on land, but in the ocean, you at least have a second date before leaving your entire life's existence behind to hook up with a stranger in a dangerously isolating situation. I mean, there are such things as perverts and serial killers even among royalty. Actually, more-so, really, considering all of the inbreeding leads to that sort of deviant behavior. Look at your family tree? It's predominantly psychopaths. The kid there," she pointed to Henry, "between his nature and nurture could grow up to be the next Baker's Man."

"What, the nursery rhyme guy? Paddycake paddycake?" asked Henry, confused.

"More like the Enchanted Forest's Sweeney Todd," answered Belle. "He baked hundreds of people into cakes and pies, moving from kingdom to kingdom as people caught on to what he was doing. He would sing that song after he'd tied them up while he was sharpening his knives. It was finally assumed he either died or fled through a portal to another realm when the killings stopped, I think about a decade before the Dark Curse. _"_

"Wait... so you think I'm gonna grow up to murder and eat people in pastry form?" Henry asked Miranda, offended.

"I didn't say he ate them. He served them to other people. See, there's that hereditary stupidity again," the mermaid snidely retorted and Henry harumphed and crossed his arms.

"Yeah, well," he retorted, "you're following a crazy klepto who makes Tinkerbell look well-adjusted."

"Hey!" Tinkerbell exclaimed. "I am working on my issues. And I only steal watches from corpses, I don't drown people or stick spiney sea life up their asses."

"Don't tell me you haven't wanted to, though," Belle mused. "I know a few people I wouldn't mind having a scared puffer fish up their bum." She shot Hook a look as she spoke and he glared back.

"I'm sure that can be arranged," grinned Miranda.

Hook covered his butt and growled, "I've had quite enough damage done to my arse by a sadistic nurse. I don't need you sea wenches sticking anything up there!"

"On second thought, we'd probably catch some antibiotic and magic-resistant whore disease you got from your mother, anyway," Miranda shrugged.

"I hate _all_ of you," grumbled Hook.

"The feeling is mutual," retorted Regina.

"And apparently Ariel hates us all," sighed Snow. "I really thought we were friends. I can't believe she would do this to us. I feel so betrayed!"

"On the bright side, though," Belle interjected, "it's actually kind of a relief that Ariel was pretending to be such a dimwit, even if it was to try and kill us all. I mean, I feel like the only intelligent 'Disney Princess' around here. It's rather frustrating."

"So you'll take 'intelligent but evil and trying to kill you' over 'slow-witted but kindhearted and nearly getting you killed out of stupid good intentions'?" asked Henry.

"Basically."

"I can see that."

Snow and Charming gave their grandson a look and he groaned, "What? This town has a _lot_ of stupid people in it since the Dark Curse broke the first time. Honestly, it's like contagious stupidity or something."

"It's called neurosyphilis," said Regina, glaring at Hook.

"That's not my fault! And don't forget all the monkey herpes that _your sister_ infected people with! I had nothing to do with that!"

"ALL YOU, SHUT UP!" growled Miranda. "And get in the freezer!"

* * *

"So, let me get this straight," Emma addressed one of the dumb mermen after Ariel had left them. "You're going to go all Aztec sacrifice on me and use some blue magical rock candy to sink Storybrooke and Eric's island to make your own underwater kingdom from which you'll conquer Atlantis, dethrone Poseidon, and 'return your people to their glory days when they ruled the world and humans were nothing but savages living in caves'. Have I got that right?"

"Pretty much," said the darker haired of the two mer-mimbos.

"You know her heart is rip-out-proof, right?" asked Neal.

"That's why we've got hostages. Duh," said the other. "To make her rip it out herself."

"We'll ensure your family," Mer-Mimbo #1 told Emma, "gets over the town line to live happily-ever-after in his one bedroom apartment."

"I don't get why you didn't keep _your_ apartment," Mer-Mimbo #2 said to Emma. "I saw Henry's pictures on Facebook and it was a sweet pad. You could have sublet that place to some hipsters for a nice chunk of change."

"The lease didn't allow subletting," Emma replied, "or Time Square street performers. Buzzing up Hook was apparently a violation. I guess he made rapey comments to a number of female residents. They sent me a notice that after a condo board hearing they'd decided I was gonna get kicked out on account of it being my third violation. Technically, it was Henry who put Canadian quarters in the dryers, though."

"What was your second strike?" asked Mer-Mimbo #2.

"Why does it matter?" huffed Emma.

"The jewel thief?" asked Neal.

Emma groaned. "Yeah, the jewel thief!"

After a pause, Emma offered Mer-Mimbo #2, "How about you can have all my stuff that I brought back to Storybrooke if you let us go?"

"What would I do with your human material things under water?" scoffed the merman.

"There's jewelry. You could give it to your girlfriend. Say you drown some human whore for it."

"Hmmm, Shayla does like jewelry. Are there pearls?"

"Sure."

"What are you doing?" Mer-Mimbo #1 hissed. "You can't release the humans! What about Queen Ariel's plans?"

Mer-Mimbo #2 shrugged. "She's a bit of a nutjob. We both know it. Plus, a total kleptomaniac. I mean, that dirty old rusted thing she brought back from the Land Without Magic is total junk! I don't want her littering my New World Order with ugly crap like that! She's going to make our ocean just as polluted as the Land Without Magic one. We'll be swimming in a gyre of plastic bags and rubber duckies!"

"You've seen Mr. Quackington?" Emma exclaimed.

"Mister who?" Mer-Mimbo #1 asked. "Look, lady, we know our queen is a bit crazy, but your queen has murdered thousands of people just for not thinking she's pretty enough. Ours wants to keep our people from being persecuted by humans who trap us in nets and rape our women."

"Pirates actually rape mermaids?" Emma shuddered.

"The sea is lonely, I've been told," shrugged Neal.

"Pirates _and_ sailors. It's just not just syphilitic mariners you love to hate and make love to, it's the poncy ones with scurvy as well," explained Mer-Mimbo #2. "They do whatever they want in International Waters. Why do you think we had to make those magical hair nets? Humans started it. In the event one falls overboard in a storm, then we get our revenge, but it's mostly torture porn since it's not like the crews really know our people drown the men most of the time unless we can find an island or atoll nearby to string up the corpse with a jellyfish tied around their head, but then the sea birds get to it first..."

"You guys really are disgusting," groaned Emma.

"We're revolutionaries!" the mermen chimed together.

"You're idiots," stated Neal. "Even your queen thinks so. Why should you serve a woman who thinks you're stupid?"

"Shut up, human scum!" Mer-Mimbo #2 growled.

"I bet I could totally take you in a fight too," Neal scoffed.

"As if!" Mer-Mimbo #1 laughed. "We are ripped! You don't even have a one pack, bro. Do you even work out?"

"Hey, I was recently dead. I haven't had time to work off the gut, and at least I don't chug chimichangas like the pirate."

"That's true," conceded Mer-Mimbo #2. "He's not as fat as the pirate. I hear he's going bald too."

"Yes, but he's using a potion to put his back hair on his head. Humans are so gross with their body hair!"

"I know, right!"

"Look," sighed Neal, "can you at least let me up to take a leak or do I have to piss myself?"

The mermen exchanged a look, and Mer-Mimbo #1 agreed, "Fine, but you are not peeing in our ocean. Do you know what filth is spewed out of your ships into our water?"

"But don't you just pee in your own water like fish?" asked Emma. "And how does that work anyway?"

"We excrete our urine through our gills," explained Mer-Mimbo #2 and wouldn't you know it, merpeople actually had gills that appeared along his jawbone... and peed all over Emma.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh! What the hell did you do that for!?" she cried.

"For science!"

"That doesn't even make sense! And that's disgusting! You pee through the same things you breath with!?"

"And you humans like to stick your dicks and fingers in your buttholes and suck each others' genitals," stated Mer-Mimbo #1.

"He has a point," shrugged Neal. "Assplay and oral is comparatively just as gross. I mean, urine's technically sterile. If you pee on your feet in the shower it can prevent athlete's foot."

"You _pee_ in the shower?" Emma exclaimed, disgusted.

"So? Hook pees in the shower all the time and you had shower _sex_ with him."

"I had shower sex with _you_."

" _One_ time."

"Yeah, the time that counted! We made Henry. And we had gravity and a shower massage working against us!"

Suddenly Mer-Mimbo #1 collapsed with a loud _thunk_ and as Mer-Mimbo #2 turned he was whacked hard in the face with a lobster trap swung by an angry and wet Smee shouting, "Take that, motherfucker!"

* * *

AN: Smee saved the day? SMEE!?

Next up: Will Emma be exsanguinated?


	84. Deadliest Catch

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE**

 **DEADLIEST CATCH**

"Smee saved you? SMEE!?" Hook exclaimed.

"Stop shouting or you'll break the damn mirror!" Regina growled, shoving him out of the way.

Back on Hangman's Island, Emma and Neal were huddled around the compact mirror (they'd found in Ariel's massive stash of junk) which just happened to have been Regina's in Neverland that she gave to Henry and the other half just happened to be in Tinkerbell's giant handbag that she _also_ used for stealing.

 _It's a wonder those two never banged in Neverland_ , Emma considered.

"Yes, Smee saved us," she confirmed. "He was knocked off his lobster boat while laying traps and got pulled through the same portal we did. So, are you going to come and save us or what?"

"Um... about that," sighed Regina. "We're actually-"

"Being held hostage in the walk-in refrigerator at Granny's!" Tinkerbell pushed her way into view. "Mer-bitches have taken over the town. They're going to exsanguinate you all over that douchey prince Eric's - may he rest in piece... or pieces _ha_ \- kingdom and do some kinda alchemal blood magic ritual with that crystal Hook's douchey brother stole from them back in the day that led to the war that got him killed - and then they're going to drown us all in a cataclysmic magical earthquake tsunami tag-team apocalypse like happened to those Minoan people I saw bite it on the History Channel to make Atlantis 2.0... which, really, considering this is the Land Without Magic - as far as the majority of the population knows - makes me rather suspect of that station's fact checkers... And inclosing: _I don't want to go out ripped to pieces and drown in an underwater magic portal disaster! You have to save us!"_

Emma glared at Tinkerbell while Snow was heard off-mirror griping about a crazy fairy going through withdrawals.

"Aye, we would appreciate some saving," said Hook with a nod, "and if you could find me a free bilge pump in that pile of junk seeing as the mer-bitches have taken all my doubloons..."

Emma glared at them through the mirror. "Oh, so _now_ I have to save you? The other day I was a big fat lying piece of trash impostor with a bad weave."

"Oh, you heard me say that, did you?" gulped Tink.

"Obviously!"

"Everyone heard you say that," Ruby groaned. "You were standing on a table making a big announcement about it and people were cheering and you got them changing; 'Lock her up! Lock her up!'"

"Oh... right, forgot about that part," Tinkerbell said, earning glares. "What? I'm a tweaker. I forget lots of crazy shit I do when I'm high."

"REHAB!" everyone shouted.

"FINE!" Tinkerbell growled back. "Look, I'm sorry, it was an exaggeration. You're not big or fat and it's not a bad weave, it's mediocre extensions. But, come on, really, girl, you should embrace your thin, limp, dishwater blonde hair instead of trying to princess it up. Look at Aurora? She used some magic shit to perm her hair into that 'I just got fucked' do and now she's dead."

"I don't think those two are related," said Emma, "and that's not exactly an apology!"

"YOU BURNED DOWN MY HOUSE!"

"Fair point," conceded Emma. "Fine, we'll just... find some other portal. There's probably _something_ in this massive pile of junk. _Emma out_."

She swiped the mirror to deactivate it and then gave Neal a sour look for sniggered at her. "What?"

" _'Emma out'_?"

"Shut up and find a portal. Just try not to fall down it without me and Rat Man."

"Really?" sighed Neal, offended.

"Hey!" Smee called out from the traps he was sitting on, "I'm not a rat anymore!"

"You tried to gnaw on my arm, man," Neal pointed out.

"It's not my fault your old man's magic didn't reverse itself right when your grandfather sent us all back to this shitty land!"

"Fair point," conceded Neal.

"Both of you shut up and start looking for portals before Ariel gets back!" Emma growled.

"Why are you pissed off, woman?" complained Smee. "You on the rag or something?"

Emma punched him in the face, then walked off muttering about whether or not Ariel had stolen any boxes of tampons because she was not making Mulan's nasty-ass period-stopping tea from some berries that smelled like ass and tasted even worse.

"I hate my life," complained Smee.

"Maybe it wouldn't suck so hard if you hadn't spent most of it as a lying piece of scum who had no problem offing kids?" suggested Neal.

"Yeah, because karma was so spot on for _you_ , Mr. Good Guy," scoffed the ex-pirate. "And I wasn't always a villain, you know. Sure, I was a liar and thief and a con-man, but I only lied to, stole from, and conned assholes like Hook."

"Who was more sadistic than you gave him credit for and he played you, man," Neal told the stocky former first mate. "And you _still_ wanted to murder me."

"Only because that would've been kinder than being mutilated by Pan, molested by Felix, and eaten - not in a sexy way - by mermaids," Smee defended.

Neal sighed. "Fair point," he repeated, "but still not cool, man."

"Yeah, well, you trusted _Pinocchio_ to-"

"Oh my god!" Emma called out.

"What?" Neal exclaimed, ready to go into panic mode.

"An entire cargo container's worth of rubber duckies!"

It was true. At the center of the pile of trash, like the yummy nougat inside a nasty shredded coconut covered white chocolate was a cheerful yellow mass of identical rubber duckies spilling out all over the sand.

"Wasn't there something on the news years ago about a cargo container of rubber duckies that fell overboard in a storm?" recalled Neal. "How did she even manage to collect so many?"

"Magical hair net?" shrugged Emma.

"Dude," Smee interrupted as he dug through the duckies, "there's something rusty under the bath toys."

A bit more digging began to reveal that there were not as many rubber duckies as there first appeared to be, but instead they were covering a large piece of rusted metal in the shape of a giant suppository with fins on one end.

There was writing on the side, which Emma read, "Operation Castle. Do not attempt to remove arming rod for strike. Attach arming shackles... remove safing wire..."

"What's Operation Castle?" wondered Smee.

Neal answered, "A series of tests from the nineteen fifties involving thermonuclear hydrogen bombs, one of which they fucked up big time and completely blew up an island."

"Holy shit! This is a nuke!?" Smee cried. "That lunatic is hoarding a rusted nuke! What if it's leaking? What if we're gonna die of radiation poisoning!? I hate my life but not that much!"

"I doubt the protective coating of rubber duckies was keeping Ariel and her minions' skin from falling off," said Emma. "Still, we'd better find that portal. The last thing this world needs on top of crazy-shit magic is nuclear weapons blowing shit up."

"Unless nuclear weapons destroy magic," considered Neal. "Belle was going on about this _Harry Potter_ fanfic the other day that she had printed out and was pissed that it got burned up in the fire that had some sort of AU plot that Voldemort was going to use nuclear weapons to destroy all magic."

"Exposition too much?" Emma retorted. "And that's a worse idea than throwing the Goblet of Fire down the well"

"Just thought I'd throw it out there," he shrugged.

"Hey, guys!" Smee called out from where he had walked over to put some metal junk over his junk.

"You know that only works if it's made of lead, right?" asked Neal.

"Not that! _That_!" huffed Smee, pointing to a desiccated magic bean. Actually, there was an entire bottle of them which had broken on the sand.

"You know," recalled Emma, "Anton did mention that he couldn't find any traces of the magic beans he knew had sprouted on the vines Regina torched. We assumed she took them before she burned the field. Ariel must have paid Storybrooke a visit before Regina summoned her in Neverland..."

"Maybe she was even helping Pan," considered Neal. "His initial plan was to restore Neverland until we escaped and he had to body-swap with Henry. He got Neverland, she got to sink Storybrooke to make her own kingdom. She could have been scouting for him, looking for Henry, since he obviously didn't trust Greg or Tamara with the real plan."

Emma fumed. "If that bitch was helping turn our son into a sacrificial victim, then she is _so_ going down. I will stab _her_ through the heart with a stingray spine!"

"As much as I'm sure we'd all enjoy that," said Smee, "these aren't much use unless your magic powers can restore them."

"This might work," Neal suggested, pulling out a small vial from a cord around his neck. "Water from Neverland. Stuff my father used to make that potion for your dad," he told Emma. "Obviously, he was holding out on how much be brought back himself, so I nicked some from his supply before the... er... memorial service cruise what with Ruby mentioning the whole evil mermaids threat thing. Also brought some squid ink. Too much exposition again?"

"Yeah, yeah, you're Magical MacGuyver," grouched, Emma and she poured a drop on one of the beans which instantly was restored to its glittery original appearance.

* * *

As Ariel was in the middle of giving a fascist speech to her minions on the beach, holding up the Eye of the Storm, the water suddenly began to retreat and a blue glowing portal appeared sucking it in - and spitting out three people and a _huge_ pile of junk that rained down, causing the merfolk to flee from dinner forks, toilet seats, traffic cones, car batteries, crab traps, and hundreds of squeaking rubber duckies.

"Noooooooo!" Ariel cried and swung her trident.

Emma was ready with a sword from the junk pile and struck the trident with a loud _clang._

"Did you help Pan find my son!?" she demanded.

"Maybe I did!"

"I'm going to turn you into fish bait, bitch!"

"You and what army?" Ariel taunted. "Your people all hate you for forsaking them and exposing them to threats like this one! You're no one's savior and they're not your soldiers!"

"Maybe not," Emma hissed, getting in a strike that grazed Ariel's shoulder and instantly paralyzed her with squid ink, "but I have your precious gemstone."

She plucked the Eye of the Storm from Ariel's hand before Neal and Smee picked the stiff-as-a-board mermaid up and carried her toward town, past the merfolk who looked uncertain of what to do with their queen taken hostage.

"Try anything and the bitch gets it!" Emma threatened, holding her sword Ariel's throat.

"You wouldn't!" Miranda called out.

In response, Emma stabbed Ariel in the right shoulder. She had to admit, she didn't feel too bad about it either.

"Next one's in the heart."

Miranda glared and the crowd parted and let them down Main Street to Granny's, which was open, but the freezer had some kind of magical sea-creature stuck to the door that seemed to be sending out pulses of magic to keep everyone inside. Emma stabbed it with Ariel's dreamshade-tipped trident and it instantly shriveled up and turned to ash.

Upon opening the door, they found everyone (but Hook) huddled together on one side of the freezer while the pirate was on the other eating out of giant can of Beef-A-Reeno.

"Oh, thank god!" they all cried, quick to flee the freezer along with a rather potent fart smell.

"Mom! Dad!" exclaimed Henry, hugging them.

"You're grounded!" they both shot back and Emma held out her arm, glaring.

"I guess I expected that," he sighed and removed her anti-magic cuff.

"So, what do we do now?" asked David.

"Clearly," said Regina, "we hand this nutjob over to Ursula and put an end to this insanity!"

"What's Princess Ursula going to do?" groaned Snow. "This whole cult started up in defiance of her and Poseidon."

"Not _that_ Ursula, the _real_ Ursula."

* * *

"You're sure this is going to work?" asked Emma as night began to fall and Regina wadded into the water dressed up like a Disney villain... just not her Disney villain.

"Positive. She told me if I ever impersonated her - and this badly - again, she would personally show up and murder me," Regina insisted while trying out her tentacles. "It will work."

She was right.

The water began to boil and churn within minutes, and out of it emerged a sea goddess who might well have been the Princess Ursula's ancestor and looked absolutely nothing like the Disney version... aside from, well, being just a bit heavyset. Her dark hair was done up in a poofy do contained by a wreath-like crown of golden shells which also covered her ample bosom.

"Woman, I told you that if you tried that shit again, I would cut you!" Ursula growled, many tentacles writhing and twitching, ready to rip the former Evil Queen limb from limb.

"I was just trying to get your attention," Regina huffed, turning back into her real appearance. "We need you to clean up your own trash," she gestured to Ariel who was no longer paralyzed, but handcuffed and had bloody gauze on her shoulder. "This nutcase was trying to sink two kingdoms and carry out a coupe against your descendants. Also, she has brought a nuclear bomb to the Enchanted Forest which could destroy magic, effectively destroying life on both land and sea."

Ursula turned to Ariel and demanded, "Is this true?"

The redhead sniffed. "Humans are polluting our world, plundering the seas of _our_ resources. Something had to be done!"

"Perhaps," Ursula conceded, "but mass murder of their people is not the answer, nor is destroying your own society for this warmongering ideology. Poseidon's diplomacy may not have reaped quick rewards, but he has encouraged many kingdoms to crack down on piracy and privateering, the humans who most disrespect our waters."

"Crack down? He has us murdered!" interrupted Hook.

"You're _still_ alive?" groaned Ursula. "How did the syphilis from your whore mother not kill you, pirate scum?"

Shrugging, Hook answered, "Dr. Whale said I'm more of a carrier than afflicted. Like some chick named Mary who gave loads of people typhoid. They all kicked it while mostly she just had the sniffles and coughed a lot in people's food. Lucky me, eh?"

"Yeah, lucky you," muttered Belle darkly.

Ursula turned her attention back to Ariel. "You will be punished, Ariel. This is not the way.

" _All of you will return to the sea at once_!" she called out, voice bellowing loudly and summoning the other merfolk, seemingly against their will.

Once in the water, their jewelry shattered and another portal opened and sucked them all in.

After the sea was calm again, Hook mused, "You know, she reminds me a little of that actress on that show about the college for stupid old people."

"You mean where you'd go if you knew how to read?" taunted Henry.

Hook punched him in the arm.

"Child abuse!' Henry called out.

Neal sighed and Emma shrugged and said, "This time I'll allow it."

"Can I give him a wedgie?" Hook inquired, brow raised.

"After smelling pirate farts for an hour because of Henry's blatant disregard for parental authority and common sense," grumbled Regina, "why not?"

"Can it be _atomic_?" Hook gleefully asked and at everyone's shrug, Henry swore and took off running down the beach with Hook in hot pursuit.

"I had a witch charm my hook just for atomic wedgies, lad! Just ask Smee!"

"No way you'll catch me, fat-ass!" Henry called back right before tripping rather spectacularly over a rubber ducky.

"Could that bomb really destroy magic?" Emma asked, ignoring her son's calls of distress and Hook's maniacal laughter.

"Of course not," scoffed Belle. "That's fanfiction bullshit."

"Well, Ursula seems to have bought it, so that's all that matters," shrugged Neal, wincing in sympathy but also not going to Henry's aid as the kid cried out in discomfort and abject humiliation.

"Wow, that really _was_ atomic," Ruby commented as Hook lifted up the band of Henry's underwear on his hook like a trophy.

* * *

A few days after the merpeople mess, the citizens of Stroybrooke gathered for a fish fry and clam bake on the beach that doubled as a clean-up for all of Ariel's portal-transported junk and rubber duckies, all of which Emma had looked over in a unsuccessful search for Mr. Quackington.

"Well, as far as crazy magical adventures go, this one wasn't so bad," said Hook while devouring a crabpuff. "I mean, it was only one day, and I found a functional bilge pump in that loony wench's clutter. I call that a win-win."

"You spent the day locked in a freezer eating free food and farting like an old dog while me and Emma nearly got gutted by Ariel and her mimbo henchmermen _and_ we had to hang out with Smee," Neal pointed out while reading a newspaper article about an old atomic bomb washing up on some island in the Pacific.

"Oh, true. You have my sympathies for having to endure Smee's company, mate," Hook told him. "I still can't believe he did _two_ things useful in one day."

Ella and Thomas walked past then with Alex/Alexandra, their possibly magically hermaphroditic - no one wanted to ask - kid who'd seemingly re-grown to toddler age and was clutching a rubber ducky. He/she wasn't the only one as quite a few kids on the beach had new bath toys.

"At least all the former forest hobo kids are happy," sighed Emma, watching them tote around their free rubber duckies.

"Maybe it will encourage them to actually _bathe_ ," mused Regina.

"That's an awful thing to say," Snow huffed, then conceded, "but true. We really need to institute a hygiene class and probably some sort of Town Hall meeting for the parents, because Parent-Teacher night is coming up and I might have to wear a gas mask. At least Robin smelled 'of forest' instead of unwashed ass."

"Don't mention that word!" moaned Henry, who was sitting very awkwardly on some drift wood. "I can't believe you guys all let the pirate scum do that to me!"

Hook harumphed at being called 'scum' for like the bazillionth time.

"Well, now you can bond over your butt hurt," shrugged Emma. "He _is_ your great great grandfather. Just try not to embrace what psychopathy you might have inherited."

"Speaking of Henry's psychotic grandfathers, where is _Gold_?" asked Regina, finally noticing that he hadn't been present for any of this mess.

Everyone looked at Belle who shrugged. "How should I know? We're taking a break."

"You take more breaks than all the celebrity couples in Hollywood combined," snorted Ruby. "Either get a divorce or own up to being married to that old power-hungry jerk with a small dick and embrace the perks of trophy-wife-ism."

"I am not a trophy wife! And Rumple does not have a small dick! It's perfectly average sized!"

"Average, eh?" snorted Hook.

Neal defended his father's manhood, "At least it's not an uncircumcised STD trap with unevenly hung balls."

"My balls are not uneven, you take that back!"

"They are uneven by like an inch," Emma reported, "and I hate that I know that."

"Yeah, well, your right tit is smaller than your left one," Hook told her, "and yes, I know that from using my spy glass to watch you bathe _and_ when you took your top off in Neverland to get sand out of it and I had pretended I went to look for firewood in the other direction. So, there!"

"I'm your great granddaughter, you pervert!"

"I didn't know that at the time!" Hook huffed. "And you should consider it a compliment that even though I knew you had an uneven bosom, I still pursued you. Granted, it was mostly to spite Baelfire and piss off your parents, and drunkenly seduce you into sleeping with me so that I could shame you later-"

Emma, Neal, Snow, and Charming all punched Hook in his arms, causing him to drop his plate of food onto the sand.

"Bugger, look what you idiots made me do!" he howled.

"Gonna cry about it, man baby?" taunted Henry.

"All right, enough of this nonsense!" Regina declared and yanked Henry by his increasingly grubby scarf. "You're coming home, taking a bath, and then burning this dreadful striped monstrosity."

"Nooooooooo!"

"Gonna cry about it, not-a-man baby?" sniggered Hook.

Tinkerbell smacked him upside the head. "Stop being a dick and go back to stuffing your face."

"Only if you help me install my bilge pump later," said Hook, wagging his brows.

Everyone groaned and threw their plates at him before walking away.

"Fine, walk away!" Hook called after them. "But you'll need my ship again like you always need The Crocodile's evil, back-stabbing, magical intellect and then you'll come crawling back and act like you never insulted me and treated me like cra-"

The pirate stopped short and scowled as that brought about a rather unpleasant revelation. "Bloody hell, I actually have something in common with Rumplestiltskin. I think I really have lost my appetite!"

* * *

While everyone was wondering where Mr. Gold was, and while the U.S. Military was trying to explain how an unexploded nuclear weapon from 1954 had washed up on a beach in the South Pacific, on a different beach, a rubber ducky was washing up just as a family of four wandered down the beach with towels and plastic pails at the end of their daytrip to the shore.

The little brown-haired boy of about five who was wadding ahead of his parents and sister picked up the toy with a shout of, "Mommy! I found a ubber ducky!"

Of course, his toddler sister squealed, wide-eyed with instant enamoration of the toy, and the little boy, if somewhat grudgingly, handed it to the toe-headed girl who shoved the thing her mouth to chew on, eliciting a look of disgust and dismay from the little boy.

His dad ruffled his hair for being a good big brother and his mom suggested they get ice cream. On the way they discussed names for the rubber ducky, settling on "Miss Featherfanny" because it made them all laugh, and later the gender-reassigned toy joined the kids in the bathtub with another somewhat bedraggled rubber ducky who'd been given an 'evil goatee' by the little boy, but wasn't evil, of course since it was just a rubber ducky and magic wasn't real, after all!

And so it was that while things yet remained undecided for Emma Swan and the people of Storybrooke, Mr. Quackington, at least, had gotten a happy ending!

* * *

AN: And so ends the story of Mr. Quackington/Miss Featherfanny! The Bomb is inspired by the _Robot Chicken_ "Disney Princess War" sketch in which everyone makes fun of Ariel the entire sketch for her junk collecting and she ends up blowing them up with an old nuclear bomb. _Operation Castle_ was the real project name, the one that included "Castle Bravo", the nuke that was accidentally 1000x more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb because of a miscalculation/misunderstanding of how a particular isotope they didn't normally use responded to the fusion process. _Operation Castle_ was the successor to _Operation Crossroads_ (the title of Part 2 Chapter 53). There are no reports, of course, that any bombs were left undetonated under the ocean, though historically some unexploded atomic bombs have been found around the world, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that one could have been lost in transport if a ship sunk (or encountered a magical portal that the U.S. Military would have covered up and probably attributed to a new Soviet weapon!) And finally, I really do remember reading, long ago, a _Harry Potter_ fanfiction that had something to do with nuclear weapons being a threat to magic.


	85. Of Dragons, Queens, and Cripples

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SEVENTY**

 **OF DRAGONS, QUEENS, AND CRIPPLES**

The last thing Regina Mills remembered, she'd stopped at Granny's to take something home for dinner and ended up ordering a drink while she waited. And then another. And another.

Apparently she'd consumed a lot of drinks from her pounding headache and the horrible taste in her mouth. She couldn't even remember the last time she got drunk, but she supposed it had been coming for awhile, since Robin's death.

Just because she'd realized that their relationship was mutually self-destructive, that being "soulmates" could never fix the fact that they missed their chance to end up like Snow and Charming and instead grew apart into people too different to ever be truly happy together _and_ make each other the best versions of themselves - though if Snow and Charming _were_ , they must have been destined to be pretty awful people apart - that didn't mean it hurt any less.

If she hadn't gotten so caught up in the idea of recapturing her one-time possible happy ending, Robin might not have been with them when Snow White cast the Dark Curse and sent them all back to Storybrooke. He might have been out in the forest, beyond the spell, raising his son and never compromising his honor to get some Evil Queen. Because of her selfish influence, a good man had died with his honor tarnished. Oh, sure, he made those choices, but could any man resist her cleavage and her smok'n ass?

A swat to said very naked under the covers ass made Regina startled and roll over, removing her face from a pillow that wasn't hers and as she pushed the hair from her eyes, concern building at just what she'd done last night, she was rewarded with the absolute most horrible 'thing' that anyone could ever do while drunk.

"Always figured you'd be a whore in the sheets, luv," Hook leered at her, half dressed in his ridiculous attempt at modern clothes that were now several sizes too small and showing off his gut along with his chest hair.

"No. _No_ ," Regina moaned, taking a the room at Granny's.

Just when she thought it couldn't get worse, Maleficent sauntered in from the bathroom wearing a bra and slip and gave Hook a dismissive wave, "Be gone, pirate whore."

"You weren't complaining last night."

"Only in your deluded fantasies. Stop toying with Regina and get out or I'll tie you to the bed and let my daughter practice magic on you."

"I'm sure I could seduce her into other activities," Hook leered.

Rolling her eyes, Maleficent retorted, "She's a lesbian."

Scowling, Hook retreated from the room, leaving Regina bordering on panicked. "Please _please_ tell me I didn't sleep with that walking venereal diseases!?"

"You didn't," Maleficent reassured. "He just showed up for a second opinion on that salve he's been using to transfer his back hair to his head. It's an obvious rip-off, but I told him he just wasn't using enough of it for long enough."

Regina snorted at that and sighed in relief. "Thank god. I'd have had to memory potion myself just to erase the memory of knowing I'd done it even without having any memory of what happened last night, it's that traumatizing a thought. What _did_ happen last night?" she asked, sitting up, holding the covers around her.

"No need to be so modest," Maleficent retorted while pulling a blouse and skirt from her closet. "You're no older than I was when we had our first dalliance. And not aging under a curse has been kinder to you than it was to me - what with being stuck as a dragon thanks to _someone_ being a spoiled, stuck-up bitch about a curse that _I_ risked my life for."

"I said I was sorry about that," Regina groaned.

"You didn't, actually."

"I'm sorry about that?"

"Too late now," Maleficent retorted.

"You're still angry with me but you slept with me?" Regina asked, bewildered.

"Got you drunk and slept with you," Maleficent corrected, "which could technically count as sexual assault or outright rape depending on my intentions when we started doing tequila shots, but considering you spent over three decades raping some poor motherless assassin to smother your pain that your mother tricked you into sterilizing yourself, I don't think anyone would prosecute. Not that anyone _could_ since your town's District Attorney is an actual ax murderer that no one has seen in months and might well have run off to Magical China the moment Pan dropped us all in the Enchanted Forest. Which, at least, I got to be stuck as a sand banshee in my own home after you and Captain Combover stumbled around my prison to get your piece of evil rock candy."

"That wasn't my most brilliant moment," conceded Regina.

Maleficent snorted and buttoned her blouse, "Getting caught in your plot to kidnap your son and leave everyone to die, you mean? Yes, _getting caught_ always did bring out your remorse, didn't it? Honestly, you're a terrible mother, Regina. You emotionally neglected and psychologically abused Henry for ten years. You poisoned him trying to murder his birth mother. You've left him in the care of murderers, rapists, and psychopaths. _And_ completely useless dimwits like Snow and Charming. You used his dangerous obsession with that book to help you essentially write him out of existence, all to be with a man you hardly knew who was willing to shaft his own wife who'd only been dead to him for about a year to be with you. Such great examples you've set!"

"Well, I didn't exactly have any good female role models growing up," harumphed Regina. "You were probably the most sane and you cursed a girl and her true love because her father was a dick."

"You know it was more than that," snapped Maleficent. "And to be fair, Philip was never Aurora's true love. He was gayer than a male figure skater, but his father made him take various magical supplements to be into women. I was trying to do him _and_ Aurora a favor by cursing him. Better a fire monster in a foreign land saved by some sexy Chinese soldier - with a dick - than denying his sexuality, tethered to a dumb little twit for the rest of his life because my ex sisters brainwashed them into believing they were soulmates."

"From what I understand, Aurora was actually tolerable after Philip lost his soul," shrugged Regina.

"So I've heard. I suspect she was bisexual like her mother. I do feel sorry for that Mulan girl, caught in the middle of that fraudulent mess. She certainly was a more worthy partner than Philip, if Aurora did have actual wits to develop when not focused on her duties to pop out babies. Her mother did get a clue, after all, just too late. King Stefan really didn't deserve her. It's unfortunate that both died young, because of foolish princes. More tragic that Aurora squandered her potential to lay on her back and open her legs for a mediocre prince who had to fantasize about the _stable boy_ to get it up."

At 'stable boy' Regina's expression soured further and Maleficent inquired while pulling on her stockings, "Oh, you're still caught up on Daniel are you? I noticed you have a replica of his headstone in the cemetery, the one. you made before you discovered that your mother had kept the boy's corpse magically preserved for reasons she never divulged before you banished her to Wonderland. Is it true that Whale reanimated him using one of the hearts of in your vault?"

"He did," Regina grated out. "And I suspect he used one of my mother's victims who'd died and their soul was trapped in eternal torment until I... destroyed Daniel's body."

"And yet you still have that vault full of hearts. Wouldn't finding their owners and destroying those belonging to the dead go a ways toward redemption for your own murdering?" Maleficent countered.

Shrugging, Regina argued, "I've been busy."

"Being your mother's brainless stalking horse still insipidly desperate for her approval," scoffed the ex-fairy. "You need to grow up, Regina. I cared for you, I really did, but we could never be more than fuck buddies. You just refused to own your mistakes and act like an adult. Yes, that quill was evil and being tethered to the printed page, recorded by egotistical idiots born in this world is a cruel fate for anyone, hero or villain, but being locked in a room with a pile of cocaine doesn't mean you have to snort the whole kilo. You had enough free will not to make the bad choices you were given. It was just easier to blame the world.

"I've been there," she said. "And I'd hoped that when you came to me for help and ended up _helping me_ , I would have inspired in you the same realization that dark magic and murder are not the way. I didn't, of course, I just added to your repertoire of harmful magic while hoping that with age would come wisdom. I'm not entirely sure that it has."

"Tell me what you really think," groused Regina.

"That you have just enough of your father's cowardice to counter your mother's psyopathy and give you a chance at being a stable member of society," answered Maleficent. "Of course, even though you _are_ capable of empathy, I believe, you're also just too chicken-shit most of the time to let yourself feel for others unless it benefits you, so, really, you inherited the worst of both of your parents and the silver lining in that cloud is pretty tarnished.

"But you do have Henry, if only because that Emma Swan turned out to be an equally shitty parent in different ways and so has very little moral ground to stand on to challenge you for custody, particularly considering the revelations about her future past behavior as a pirate-loving skank who dragged the boy to The Underworld and then woefully neglected him for the next ten years. Poor boy. Ignored by his adoptive mother the first ten, ignored by his birth mother the next while you allowed it because, of course, you must have enjoyed being the one he went to, his primary mother, rather than seeing the boy was hurting for his other mother's neglect and telling her to get her priorities straight and dump her sex toy. You're threatened by the fake memories you gave them both, that they're better than Henry's real ones."

Regina harumphed and crossed her arms.

Maleficent rolled her eyes again. "Well, don't worry, they're not. At least for her. These walls are thin and she's emotionally traumatized by having entirely fraudulent memories of the past decade that portrayed her as a more caring version of you rather than herself, because even with that 'gift' you couldn't let Emma be Emma, couldn't give up that control."

"No, it's because I knew her history from Sydney's research and she was a complete fuck-up. There would have been no way to believably weave that persona with raising a child."

"Plus control."

"Okay, maybe. What are you a shrink now?" Regina grumbled. "And where are my clothes so I can get out of here?"

"You vanished them. No idea," the blonde shrugged while grabbing her room key and heading for the door. "Make sure housekeeping airs this place out. It smells like unwashed pirate _and_ pussy."

"I have impeccable feminine hygiene!" Regina growled at the retreating sorceress, cursing under her breath, " _Bitch_."

Getting up, Regina summoned her suit, which arrived damp, muddy, and covered in pine needles. She banished the filth away and quickly got dressed, trying to put last night's presumed activities out of her mind - and the occasional actives of years ago, before she acquired Graham as her sex toy and Maleficent refused to continue their relationship in that capacity; the sorceress wouldn't attempt to put a stop to it, but she'd refused to condone or reward Regina for what she did to The Huntsman... even if he was a cold-blooded murderer until, for some reason, Snow White thawed his heart slightly.

Regina sighed and hated that she felt guilty for what she'd done to her old friend. Maleficent had been her only friend for a long time, and the only real mentor she'd had as well, but she was so desperate to cast the Dark Curse that when the sorceress stole that orb from Rumplestiltskin in an attempt to stop him after losing Lily, she nearly killed and then trapped Maleficent in dragon form for 28 years. It was a horrible thing to do to a friend, particularly one who had lost a child in the whole sordid plot that Rumple had set in motion between the Dark Curse itself and his fight with The Apprentice for magical supremacy over The Dark One. They were both pawns, and instead of seeing reason, Regina had victimized a fellow victim.

She couldn't bring back her father. And she couldn't bring back the years Maleficent lost with her daughter, a girl who'd clearly grown up into an even more maladjusted criminal loser than Emma. Sadly, even with none of her own light, Lily probably had a better chance of getting her shit together with Maleficent for a mother than Emma did with Snow and Charming, _even with_ memories of a life ill-spent under their tutelage.

"I may be a bad parent," Regina said to her reflection, "but I am a better parent than Snow White."

It didn't have the same ring to it as _, "Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"_ But as far as egotistically competitive remarks went, at least the facts backed it up. The Evil Queen she might have been for many years, but she genuinely did want to be a better mother than better liked than Snow White.

Honestly, at this point, that wasn't even hard!

* * *

"Ladies," Maleficent nodded to Snow and Emma on her way into the diner.

"Hey... how's Lily?" asked Emma.

"Still at the farm. She hasn't mastered her transformations yet. Perhaps if she had _all_ of her magic..."

Maleficent didn't give them a chance to respond, leaving the diner while Snow looked guilty and Emma unsure.

"I don't think it's as easy as she wants to believe," Snow finally said after setting down her cup of cocoa.

"You just want to justify what you did by saying this town or our world needs me to be a savior," Emma countered. "Maybe they do, but it's still wrong that Lily has to fight to be good more than she should. She didn't make a choice to be tainted like Rumplestiltskin. Or Regina. Or even me. Not that I suppose I had the free will, really, did I? Anny darkness I carried around my whole life was only what rubbed off on me from others. It wasn't balancing anything, It just made me an asshole by magical proxy. It was preventing me from being me, so how could I ever hope to find _my_ happy ending?"

Snow sighed and told her genuinely, "I'm sorry."

"I know you are."

"I made a lot of bad choices as your mother-"

"And I hope you can be better at this with my brother, but... I really don't need you to be my mother. I just... need a friend," Emma told her.

"Emma, I always wanted to be your friend," Snow insisted, "I just went about it wrong after the Curse broke. I had wanted so badly to be your mother, to raise you, and then I didn't do any of that, and here you were, this... almost complete stranger who didn't want to get close, to accept your family. It was... hard to accept on my end. I'd lost my mother, then I lost my daughter too."

"And I lost my mother and my son and my daughter was... she was a mistake that was never meant to exist and I haven't even come to terms with that really. It's just easier to pretend that she didn't exist," sighed Emma. "What a fucked up family we are, huh?"

"I don't think you've lost Henry. He's a teenager. He'll come around," Snow told her, "and what happened in that other timeline, Emma, the relationships you had... It seems you weren't entirely yourself. No one was, and-"

"I can't just pretend they didn't happen because it was a messed up universe," Emma cut her off. "The choices I made, I did those things without a soul. And considering Cora had Regina without a heart and she became a mass murderer, _and_ her father was a psychopathic rapist... it's no wonder my daughter turned out to be a psycho who helped destroy the world. I was one step removed from being the mother of the antichrist, basically. I can't just pretend that was a bad dream."

"But you can learn from those mistakes, Emma."

"Which doesn't make me a good person!" argued Emma. "Learning from what you did to Lily and me, that doesn't just make you a good person, not when it ruined my life!"

The outburst drew a pained look from Snow who turned her cup in her hands. "I know that, Emma. My one selfish choice has lead to so much destruction, so much pain, for the people I love. And there's nothing I can do to make it right."

"There's nothing I can do to make right what I did either," Emma told her. "I didn't die a hero and get a second chance to fix things. I died a useless, pathetic death for my grandchild that was _actually_ fathered by my own husband who was screwing my son's wife. I didn't even _save_ her. She died. _Everyone_ died. The choices I made, because I didn't save Neal, because I made all the selfish choices a savior shouldn't make, lead to the _end of existence_."

"But you're here," Snow pointed out. "You have a second chance to make the right choices."

"A chance that I'm still screwing up," grumbled Emma. "And it's not _my_ chance. It's only because 'lucky' for us, our existence is actually some bullshit fiction that's not _really_ real, or as real as everyone outside of this town. We're bound to that pen and that stupid _stupid_ book. Everyone's stuck, who they are made up by their stories. Only, I was just a baby when the book stopped being written because of the Dark Curse, so I was supposed to change things. But I didn't. Instead I went to The Underworld for _Hook_ , I helped Henry bring that awful quill back, made him The Author, and in doing so I trapped us both in bullshit stories, took away what free will we had. I destroyed the world instead of saving it."

Snow let out a breath and mused, "So, that nonsense Ruby and Tinkerbell were going on about is true. We _aren't_ real."

"We're sort of real. We just... don't have souls that go to Heaven. We're... inferior creations," Emma snorted. "And I don't know how to fix that. I thought... when Neal came back, that maybe us getting a second chance would be the way to do it, like true love broke the Curse the first time. But everything I did... Neal's too disgusted by my past and future past actions to trust me, let alone feel true love for me."

"That doesn't mean with time you won't gain his trust and rekindle that love," Snow stated. "I know our world has a tendency to speed things along, to fall in love in a day. And you're right that's not how love really works. Or it's not supposed to. Your father and I... I suppose we were written that way, and everyone else was too, including you and Hook in that other timeline when you got inserted into The Book in the past, right? But you and Neal, that wasn't in any magical book, that was _real_. And real doesn't happen over night."

"Sometimes it doesn't happen at all," sighed Emma. "I don't think he's going to forgive me. And it's all my fault. I'd buried my love so deep. I had... one moment in Neverland when I let it out, but I shoved it back down so hard I couldn't even let him see it," she lamented. "I told him that I'd rather he'd stayed dead. I think that's where I lost him. No matter what I really meant, I think that's where we ended. I chose his death, his not being there for our son, over facing the pain of real emotions, real love. I chose all the shallow shit after that, and it didn't help, and that's a declaration I can't take back. It was my first chance to choose him selflessly, to choose love, and I didn't. And then I didn't even grieve, so it's like I didn't care, and that's what he sees. Me giving up on him. Me not caring that he was gone."

"It's never too late to choose love, Emma," Snow told her. "It's never too late to make up for your mistakes."

Grimacing, Emma responded, "Yeah, you say that, but the thing is? I'm not good with love. Or fixing my mistakes. I feel sometimes like I don't really know what love is, like I don't know if what I feel is what love is supposed to feel like, or if it's just... desperation and fear or lust and obsession... I think my childhood really messed me up so I don't even realize half the time I'm even screwing up let alone have a clue how to fix the damage."

Snow gave her a guilt-ridden, despondent look. "I'm so sorry, Emma. If I'd known you were going to grow up so... unhappy, with so little love... and all because of the selfish choices I made, I never would have had that spell cast. And maybe all the speeches about love and happy endings are my way of... desperately hoping something can fix all of those mistakes, that if you can find your happily ever after, a love like mine and your father's, then it will... lessen my guilt, it will mean it's not too late to fix things."

"But it won't, and it is," Emma told her. "It's like Henry in the other timeline thinking if he could write Cruella back to life it would make me no longer a killer. But bringing someone back doesn't undo the act that killed them, it doesn't remove that dark spot. And maybe you can actually do that too with the magical stroke of a pen, but our lives were an endless loop of magical loopholes that meant we never had to face the consequences of our actions. But that's not how life is supposed to work. You screw up, someone gets hurt.. _And it's supposed to impact you in a way that changes you_. And you shouldn't be able to magic it all into sunshine and rainbows. You can't. It's all a sham, a trick, and it ultimately collapsed under the weight of all those lies, all of that denial. And I see it still happening, and I don't know how to change it, to do it right this time.

"You can't fix all your mistakes," Emma said sadly. "I got damaged because of them. I'm always going to be damaged. People talk about how you get out of the system, you get out of prison and you move on, you put the past behind you, but you don't really. I'm still in that group home. I'm still in that prison cell. And until I figure out how to get justice for everyone here, how to make sure all of the magical crap that ruined my life can't ruin Henry's or any one else's, I'm stuck there being alone, being nothing but a number, and it's time that I accept that."

"Emma, you are not a number!" Snow gasped. "You're a wonderful, brave, smart, kind woman-"

"I'm not," Emma interrupted. "You guys give me all these titles. The Savior. A Princess. I've been The Dark One. But none of those are really me, just what other people have made me. I guess I don't know what I am other than not happy. I don't think I've ever really been happy."

Snow looked at her sadly. "This may sound strange, but I do understand a little. Growing up... I was the Princess, the heir to the throne, and never given an option. Then my mother died and I was also supposed to live up to the pedestal my father had put her on - that now... I have to wonder if he was overcompensating for my benefit, that he didn't want me to realize what a sham their marriage was, how angry he still was at being conned into a union that cost him one with the woman he truly loved. He didn't want me to live with the truth of what my mother had done, so instead he made her this saint, this martyr I was always trying to be like and failing - because, of course, she wasn't real, so how could I?"

With a grimace, Snow continued, "I was so sure that my mother would be disappointed in me, in how I had failed our kingdom, how so many died because I wasn't able to fight Regina for so long, that I suppose I wanted to make sure you weren't... as weak as I was, indecisive, tempted by selfish things. And that's why I had that spell cast. I didn't want you hampered by my weaknesses, not when they could lead you down a path like Regina's. And I'm so sorry. I failed you, just as my mother failed me."

"Seems to be a pattern in this family," muttered Emma darkly.

"You're right," Snow conceded. "And we need to stop it. We both need to do better. I've spent too long struggling to fit these two versions of me together and failing to see how fractured this family is. That's why I need to let Mary Margaret go."

"Yeah, you really do. You can't be the real you plus the worst version of you tacked onto it," said Emma, "because that's double all your shittiest qualities which undermines all the good ones. That's what this town has been since the Curse broke: a bunch of people with Amplified Asshole Syndrome failing to do anything good because they're too busy trying to embrace the inner loser that Regina's happy ending brought out of them. And no body wants to take responsibility for all the bad shit that happens because of it. Anyone who even hints at getting a clue, at some character development, they get shot down, their self-reflection spackled over with a 'forget about it, guilt is too messy, true love is an end that justifies all means' speech. But guilt is supposed to be messy and nothing justifies everything, not even true love."

"That might be true. Love might not be able to solve every problem and erase every betrayal, but an honest heart, Emma, is happier than a deceitful one."

"But just as lonely," sighed Emma. "I am working on the honesty, though."

* * *

"Belle, I'm sorry," Rumplestiltskin pleaded at the brunet who was packing up the study in his house, the house that was supposed to be their house with the musty, dusty room filled with her favorite books.

"You're always sorry, Rumple," Belle countered. "And nothing changes. I thought with Baelfire back you'd give up this thirst for power, but I was wrong. Neal and Emma freed you from that vile curse and you want to bring it back? You're lucky I found the vault key before you succeeded."

"You don't understand," he grumbled, gripping his cane that he once again needed for his limp as he followed her to the front door. "You can't just 'destroy' The Dark One, Belle. Oh, you can destroy objects it uses to acquire human hosts. but destroying an evil that ancient and not of this world is beyond any mortal wizard's capabilities, so it certainly wasn't going to be accomplished by Baelfire's dimwitted ex and that vaudeville villain of a pretender king offing Merlin with some spark from a progenitor of the gods. Nothing good comes of mortals wielding the divine."

"Or the demonic?" Belle countered. "I'm done with you twisting words to sound like your actions aren't self-serving. Maybe it's the magic you brought here conflicting with the magic of this world, but you were more honest, had more empathy and humility when you were covered in scales and giggled insanely at your own jokes. Good-bye, Rumplestiltskin. I'll send the divorce papers in the mail!"

With a sigh, the sometimes Mr. Gold watched the never officially-on-paper Mrs. Gold stride in her stripper heals and so short it was illegal in some towns skirt down the sidewalk to the green Gremlin she'd acquired off some poor sap who'd died in some magical calamity and drive off.

"Good luck finding a lawyer," he grumbled spitefully.

Rumple was growing frustrated with Belle. Probably it was her mother who'd instilled in her some stupid notion of perfection she had to aspire toward because of said woman's death. That's always how it was. Snow White tried to be so good she ended up cursing her own unborn child to a life of misery out of fear of not being as good as her own tragically dead mother who spoiled her rotten. It worked in reverse, of course. Regina and Zelena tried to be so bad, just like the mother who treated her horribly/abandoned her, that she ended up a victim of her own plotting.

Of course, Rumple also realized this worked with fathers and sons. He'd wanted so badly not to be his father that he screwed up his own son's life by becoming a selfish prick in his own way. And much as he wanted to believe that he took on the Dark One curse out of love to protect Baelfire, he knew that was just _one_ reason and underlying every decision he made was the crippling childhood fear of being a coward, powerless to change his fate or that of those he loved, "fate's eternal bitch" as his son had described his own life more recently.

Limping into the kitchen to make tea, ignoring the chipped cup in the china cabinet, Rumple wondered how Baelfire/Neal was doing. They'd not spoken much since the one pleasant family dinner they managed. His focus, after being un-Dark-One'd had been on the threat of that entity finding a way into this world with no way to control it. Now that his heart was pure, he could contain it for another good 300 years if necessary, though he'd hoped it wouldn't take quite that long. Finding a way to extend Belle's life would be tricky, even with such powers.

Well, unless he made some sort of deal with Hades, but that god already had that creepy old healer's contract that he stupidly signed when Baelfire was sick, so he couldn't even have children with Belle until it was ripped up, and he certainly wasn't going to help Hades take over Olympus - which he could only imagine was that immortal's intention now that he almost certainly had Cora's most psychotic daughter at his side.

For being heroes and given everything Emma had been through in that other timeline and talked about, they were pathetically myopic about what the alterations to this one could entail. One didn't need clairvoyance to realize there were dangers ahead, that Storybrooke would almost certainly be threatened by those two lunatics. And if The Underworld was unleashed on this town and that purgatory left unsupervised, then the Dark One would not be as defeated as they believed while all those who'd played host with their soul-corrupting insanity would run wild upon the town while Zelena's chosen were sent to The Underworld in a life-for-a-life exchange. Hadn't Swan said that was Hook's plan? Yet none of them were concerned!

"Idiots," sighed Rumple. "Even my poor Belle. If only she would embrace her darkness. Yet she refuses to acknowledge that Lacey was created from a part of her..."

Lounging on the floor, an orange tabby gave him a look that seemed to say, _"You know you're talking to cat, right?"_

"Stop giving me that look, Antonio Banderas," snapped Rumple. "And I won't be cleaning your litter box either. Belle can have you in the divorce. She's the one who wanted to rescue you in the first place. All you do is get hair everywhere and leave dead birds on the doormat."

Antonio Banderas just went back to licking his privates, or what was left of them after Belle had the cat neutered.

Rumple felt neutered. He'd been with the darkness for so long, that it had become his only true friend. His friend that made him betray his family and trick and murder innocent people. But still, it was better than being the crazy old cripple who talked to a cat!

"I know, I know," Rumple told the feline who'd gotten up and started walking away, tale swishing dismissively. " _Therapy_."

* * *

AN: Is Antonio Banderas Puss in Boots? Naw, he's just a cat. I fully expect "Puss" to be a character from The Land of Untold Stories who exists solely for Hook to make a vagina joke. As someone's fake script tease of Hook in search of Emma penned, "Sorry, you're not the pussy I'm looking for." Also, didn't I write back in Part I that Metatron gave Emma back her darkness? I think so. But she's still carrying around Lily's light. At least Lily's no longer extra dark... I guess... or something.

Next up: While The Underworld threat looms unknown to Emma and her ignorant companions, the gang _tries_ to get some of their shit together! At least they're trying!


	86. How Hook Got Fat, Tink is a Drug Dealer,

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to All: Sorry for the long delay in updating stories. I was REALLY sick the past two weeks. Thankfully, the third type of antibiotics seems to have done the trick. I didn't get any writing for this story done while convalescing, sadly, and only just did overdue editing on this latest one, so the next update might be awhile. In the meantime, I may start posting "The Outstanding Balance of Morality". And just *maybe* there is a sequel to "This Side of Paradise" in the works as I *did* binge-write an idea yesterday on the half-remembered pieces of a fever dream while binge-watching the Olympics. It depends whether or not I can connect the two halves. Anyway, sorry again, readers, and enjoy some wackiness!**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE**

 **HOW HOOK GOT FAT, TINK IS A DRUG DEALER, AND OTHER TALES FROM** **ASSHOLES** **ANONYMOUS**

* * *

 **ALL DICKS AND ASSHOLES ANONYMOUS**

 **EVERY TURDAY NITE**

 **7 PM**

With a sigh, Dr. Archie Hopper picked up the discarded letters on the grass bellow the chapel marquee and fixed the sign to read "Addicts Anonymous Every Saturday Night 7 PM All Storybrooke Residents Welcome".

 _Addicts_ Anonymous had turned out to be a rather lucrative after hours therapy gig. With a little help from Not Chief, Archie provided glamours that allowed everyone to be anonymous, so they felt safe sharing their problems with a group - even if some of them were pretty bad at delivering their secrets in such a way that didn't make it instantly obvious who they were to anyone who listened to local gossip.

But it saved Archie from having to see those particular whackjobs in private one-on-one sessions, which was the biggest bonus of all.

A number of residents were already inside, picking at the juice and cookies that the nuns somewhat grudgingly provided for being paid a stipend to use the chapel which otherwise only got used for weddings and funerals since the residents had returned to their quasi-pagan or agnostic ways.

By the time the clock tower chimed seven o'clock, the pews were packed and Archie made his way to the pulpit where the infamous baby-naming bingo basket was waiting on the alter.

"Welcome everyone to what I hope with will be another productive meeting of _Addicts_ Anonymous. I see some new glamours here tonight. Don't be afraid to share. Everyone here _is_ anonymous. Let us all support you in working through your problems. Now... to start things off..."

Archie spun the basket and pulled out, "P48."

"Woohoo!" exclaimed an old man with his pants hiked up to his ribs and everyone groaned.

"Wonderful," sighed Archie, "the pulpit is yours, Roger."

Roger took the pulpit and cleared his throat. "M'name's Roger and I'm an addict," said Roger in a thick southern accent. "As y'all know, I've been strugglin with my drinkin and wantin ta hit on all the purdy whoamen in town-"

"No one cares!" someone called out.

"Shuddup!" Roger retorted. "If brains wus dynamite you couldn't blow the wax outer yer ears!"

"Let Roger talk, Rosalind," sighed Archie.

"Ah thank ah very much, Doctor," beamed Roger.

"As y'all know," he started again, "I yousta only drink but now I druther eat. I think it goes back to when I wus a youngun and I toad my paw we was havin liver puddin fer dinner and he said he planned to stop fer a mess of butterbeans but plum dissermembered and uppin left fer a week. But today I hain't had sump'n teet since dinner."

This got halfhearted encouragement from the audience.

"My paw was never the sort ta give affection," continued Roger. "He'd always say 'Ahm agonna gichew ifn yew don't quit bothern me!' So twas mostly just me and ma bruther fending fer oursevles even bafor he uppin left. One day I wus out fer a walk in the woods and dis man says, 'Yall come ahere. I got sumpn a show yuh.' I thought he wus just wantin help 'n check duh ropes in his cart but he ended up touchin me inapproprite like. I think that's why hit took me three ares just to git my gumption up anuff to ask Lesabeth to the village dance. Which didna go well. I says, 'What is that air thang you got air in yore han', Lesabeth?' Twas her dead pet rabbit'. Neighbor had let dem hunt'n dogs of his out and dey was afixin tuh catch dinner..."

Archie tuned out the drawling man only shaking himself back to awareness when his watch beeped.

"... and my brother bard my coat in never brung it back," Roger was saying to a half-asleep crowd. "He was the chinchiest sonnovabitch I ever seen. I remember when we wus nearly drown and someone wus shoutin 'he cain't breathe. . . givvim some err!' and he pretended he couldna reach me. Thought fer years I dissermembered on account of bein' drunker than a skunk. Twas after that he wus a-tawkin to me when hit hit me dat he warn't a-movin his lips. That's when I knew I had a drinkin problem so I sobered up fer work. But I dun falled off the wagon when he died. Dunno why I cared. Bafur then I ain't heard from him in munts and then he went plunderin 'round in my underwear drawer 'n mixed up the dirty stuff with the clean stuff..."

"Um, thank you, 'Roger'," Archie interrupted and gestured for him to head back to his seat. As the others attempted to rouse themselves from their stupor, he continued, "It's not uncommon to find a vice to replace another. It's a way of deflecting from the root cause the addictive behavior. It can be difficult to dredge up childhood traumas, but as Anna demonstrated last week," he nodded to the middle-aged black lady in a polka dot dress, "it can help start the healing process. Many of us here have been abused physically or emotionally, by parents, guardians, or other perverted individuals. We did not grow up in a world that protected its children, but we can ensure Storybrooke is not like The Enchanted Forest, that such behavior is not tolerated and the next generation doesn't have to fear being molested by strange men in the woods."

After fixing his glasses, Archie asked, "How about one of the newcomers? You there, Shayla."

A small girl of about ten in pigtails slumped her way up to the lectern.

"Ah, hey," the little girl began, "like my name-tag says, I'm... ah... Shayla."

"Hi, Shayla!" everyone greeted.

"Right. Hi. So... I'm, well... sort of a drug dealer," said Shayla. "Which isn't why I'm here. See, I'm a drug dealer with a drug problem, so I'm not making any money on my own product."

"AHEM!" a pimply teenage boy called out.

Shayla rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine, it's not _my_ product! _But I was giving you a cut, okay?_ Until I got hooked again. I spent a year getting clean after Pan kicked us all back to The Enchanted Forest, but I thought I could make some quick cash but then I thought I'd just try some and see how good it was, and now I can't pay my debts and I'm snorting dust off strange women's asses!"

"Details!" the pervy old man called out.

Rosalind threw her empty juice cup at Roger.

"Roger! Rosalind! Behave!" Archie exclaimed.

"Well, that's it," said Shayla. "Thanks for listening... I guess..."

Archie shot another glare at the bickering duo and told Shayla, "Thank you, Shayla. You're not alone in your addiction problems."

"Yeah, you're the reason half of us are addicts!" someone else called out.

"Oh, stuff it, Fatima!" Rosalind retorted. "Last week you admitted to personally torturing, maiming and killing dozens of people in your Enchanted Forest racketeering business."

Fatima grumbled and Archie sighed, pulling another number from the basket that belonged to a man with thick glasses and receding hair.

"Right, so, I'm Warren."

"Hi Warren!"

"And I'm addicted to whiskey and unhealthy relationships."

"You should ask out Anna!" called out Roger. "She's into those!"

Anna gave Roger the finger.

"Also, _I'm gay_ ," amended Warren. "Which isn't important other than under the Curse I wasn't, so it feels extra rapey, I guess. Anyway, lately while trying to kick my drinking habit I've found myself dating two different guys at the same time-"

"MAN-ON-MANWHORE!" Roger called out.

" _Roger_!" Archie growled, " _out. NOW!_ "

Roger glared and shuffled his magically arthritic ass out while Rosalind sniggered and Anna called after, "Don't let the door hit your wrinkled ass on the way out!"

Sighing, Archie told Warren, "Using sex, particularly of the dysfunctional variety, is never a good way to deal with other problems. I know many here, not _just_ Anna, have struggled with alcohol and bad relationship decisions. Simply replacing one addiction with another is not the way to beat it. You have to address the root of the original addiction."

"Well, I did sort of kill my brother," sighed Warren.

There were rather an alarming number of 'me too' nods in the group with a smattering of other family member homicide admissions. Really, about half of the group had killed either directly or indirectly at least one member of their family. Archie wished he could judge them, but considering he'd tried to kill his parents...

"Perhaps next week," said Archie, "we should focus on issues of fratricide, sororicide, familicide, patricide, matricide, parricide, neonaticide, infanticide, filicide, prolicide, nepitocide, avunculicide, senicide, mariticide, uxoricide, ... and I suppose we can throw in cousin-killing since rather an alarming number of you were married to cousins that you or an immediate family member killed. Considering I've had to learn all of those terms, there is clearly a _rampant_ problem of relative murdering in this group that needs to stop and those of you who did the murdering hold yourselves to some kind of accountability as part of your recovery.

"Part of Addicts Anonymous is owning up to past mistakes _and crimes_ and accepting moral responsibility for the consequences of those actions regardless of any laws passed by Mayor Mills to pardon crimes committed prior to the Dark Curse or making those committed in The Enchanted Forest or other magical lands unprosecutable here."

"That's bullshit!" Anna called out. "Murder is murder!"

"Now, Anna," Archie tried to placate the scowling woman, "I know you're not alone in that view, but The Enchanted Forest was very different in its laws and social norms. Certain kinds of murder were considered acceptable honor killings. Rape was commonly accepted as male privilege to obtain a woman's duty. And we could spend hours talking about the problems of racial, species, and class inequality that in some cases bordered on slavery, genocide, and caste systems, all of which were perfectly normal and accepted-"

"And promoted by those fairy bitches!" Shayla called out.

"Yeah, fuck the fairies!" someone else shouted. "Why wasn't my family good enough to have a fairy godmother?"

"YEAH!" a dozen other people agreed.

"That's the real racketeering going on!" Fatima called out. "Making everyone dependent on magic and then showing up to fix the problems magic caused! They've even got us using their church!"

"YEAH!"

"EVERYONE CALM DOWN!" Archie shouted above them, wincing, as he wasn't usually one to raise his voice. "We're not here to vilify anyone. We're all here to work on our individual problems."

"The fairies are useless here anyway," scoffed a young boy. "Have you seen their pathetic attempts at magic? They only called it 'The Land Without Magic' because _they_ can't make theirs work for shit here!"

That got some laughs and hoots.

" _All right_!" Archie huffed. "Enough of this. Let's have another speaker. How about another new member? You there with the mohawk."

A very butch, slightly overweight forty-ish woman came up to the pulpit. She cleared her throat uncertainly before starting, "Hello, I'm Gwen."

"Hi Gwen!"

"... and I'm addicted to people liking me," said Gwen. "So I think I do things that will make people like me or that I think are expected of me. Like... all my life I told myself that my happy ending was supposed to be getting married and having children, but now that I have children I'm not sure if I actually wanted them or if I felt... indebted into it by a... situation. I don't think I was ready for my first child, so I told myself I had to have another child to prove that I could do it right, that I would have those motherly feelings, so the truth is, it was all about wanting to make myself feel the way everyone said I should feel. But every morning I get up and I try to find excuses to call a baby-sitter because I don't feel fulfilled. I used to be badass. I kicked butt. Now I can barely fit my mom butt into granny panties under sensible khaki high-waisted pants and I'm pretty sure all of the friends I used to have ignored my calls after we got back from Pan's Curse because they think I'm either a suburban housewife joke or a terrible mother or both... though to be honest, I didn't make a very big effort to get together with any of them outside of play dates to try and prove that I was a good mother.

"I just don't know what to do!" cried Gwen. "I love my kids, but I'm bored to death by all this child-rearing stuff and I've lost my street cred on top of it! Mom Gwen is killing Badass Gwen and I feel so guilty!"

Archie handed Gwen a box of tissues and a card with his number on it. "Thank you for sharing, Gwen. I know we all have moments since being given second identities when we feel like we're divided against ourselves. Sometimes these condensed negative-trait personalities and warped memories interfere with our true nature and feelings. They make it harder to overcome our fears, because they were dominant, unchallenged for so long by our strengths which were always hampered in some way by our insecurities. In some ways, those of us who were cursed have to work just as hard to let our true selves shine as those battling drug addictions and criminal tendencies."

"Except the actual psychopaths who are empty inside," muttered Rosalind, not that one could mutter in the echoing hall.

"Takes one to know one!" Roger shouted back, peaking out of a confessional.

"OUT!" Archie exclaimed as a sniffling Gwen made her way back to her seat.

"All right, how about you, Jesse," he gestured to a freckley, red-haired man in a suit. "You haven't spoken for awhile."

Jesse made his way to the stage and began, "I'm Jesse."

"Hi, Jesse!"

"Well... last time," Jesse said, "I talked about my alcoholic father who died. Seems most of us here had one alcoholic parent who died or left us."

This got lots of nods.

"Anyway," continued Jesse, "lately, I've been wondering if some of the negative things people have said about me are true. If I'd grown up differently, with wealth and power like some of the, um, villains here, would I be a vainglorious tyrant? I try to tell myself that I'm a good person, that I only want to do the right things and if I was in a place of power like that, I'd be a good ruler, but the truth is, I have a dark side just like my brother, and there are times that I really _really_ want to hurt someone who's hurt me or my family. There are also times when I envy those criminals, those villains, and a part of me wants to live vicariously through them, let them get away with the bad things I can't to take care of business the way heroes shouldn't."

This got some sympathetic nods and mumbles in the crowd.

"Also," Jesse concluded, "I _still_ haven't been able to find my actual wedding ring. If anyone has a ring from the Curse that isn't theirs, maybe we could meet at the refreshment table after? I had to get Rumplestiltskin to bewitch an old fake class ring to look like it but I'm worried it's going to make my finger fall off if I ever cross him."

Rosalind interjected, "Better than you d-"

" _Rosalind_!' Archie snapped. "Why don't you talk next?"

" _Damn it!_ " swore Rosalind and the small Asian woman in glasses stomped up to the pulpit.

"I'm Rosalind."

"Hi, Rosalind!"

"Hello, fellow assholes," she said, getting laughs from some in the crowd and a glare from Archie. "What? It was on the sign. I don't really know what to say. I already talked about my stereotypical abusive, neglectful, and murderous parents that most of us have. And admitted that _maybe_ I drink too much wine in the evening. I think maybe that's because I don't have any real friends."

Archie gave her an encouraging look and Rosalind sighed and continued, "I have people that say they're family and those who declare friendship, but we don't do friend things other than drink together over relationship problems like a bad sitcom. We don't go shopping together or have lunch together unless it's for talisman to protect against the next magical calamity or while brainstorming to not get killed by the next magical calamity."

"Why do you think that is?" asked Archie.

Rosalind shrugged. "Well, apart from having very little free time to socialize between magical calamities, probably because I didn't have any friends growing up. Well, I had one, but he died. After that I was stuck in an arranged marriage. There were a few times I thought maybe I'd made friends, but every time they betrayed me, bought by one of my parents or with their own agenda to use me for their own ends. I did have one friend who was a villain, but then I became a villain, and she didn't want to be friends anymore. Like I thought becoming a villain would make my mother proud of me, but still nothing I did was good enough, and then she'd confuse me by pretending that she cared and was doing things out of the goodness of her heart, which I should have known was a lie, and my father just let her hurt me, but I just kept hoping I'd make my mother proud enough to be supportive or that I'd reach some tipping point that my father would act like he really cared and try to help. Instead I got a psycho and a doormat for parents and an apathetic jerk for a husband and I just wanted so badly to connect emotionally with someone - _anyone_ \- but the only people I seem to really do that with end up dying," she sniffed.

Archie handed over another box of tissues and gave an encouraging, "Thank you, Rosalind. I know it's difficult to have awful parents who mistreat you. A lot of us, myself included, have been there. No matter how horrible they are, a part of us remains that small child who wants their affection and praise. But we have to realize when that's not going to happen and not dwell on the pain they caused us. That's the past. Your parents can't hurt you anymore. And they can't try to tell you who to be. Don't let their warped definitions of love and success guide you anymore."

The clock tower chimed and Rosalind looked relieved.

"It seems our time is up," Archie concluded the meeting. "Just try to remember that the most important thing is to be proud of yourself. Trying to aspire toward the expectations of others to create your own sense of happiness is doomed to failure. You need to be happy with who _you_ are, and this is a place to help everyone find out who that is."

The crowd began filing out, some stopping for snacks and chatting in a way they probably never would have if they'd known who they were talking to.

Archie cleaned up the plates, cups, and napkins when the last made their way outside and grabbed his umbrella from the holder by the door before heading into a cool drizzle and past the chapel sign.

 **SKANKS** **DICKS AND ASSHOLES  
**

 **CUM EVERY NITE**

 **7 PM**

There was a suspicious soggy Funyun on the ground with the scattered unused letters and Archie growled an exasperated, "ROGER!"

* * *

AN: This chapter was kinda half-assed. Sorry about that! Apologies to anyone from the South for my butchering of Dr. Goodword's A Glossary of Quaint Southernisms for Hook's ridiculous accent change-up. The opening (and end) with Archie and the sign is a nod to _Preacher_ in which someone changed the "Open your hearts and souls to Jesus" sign to read "Open your ass and holes to Jesus". I would rather kiss Arseface than watch CS makeout, tbh!


	87. Once Upon A Time In My Pants

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to SQ readers: I don't ship it, but fuck those CSers for trying to co-opt your shit in their systematic attempt to erase the validity of all other ships. The only thing they fear and hate more than another character/ship getting between/taking attention away from their pirate and his one true vagina is a fandom/ship that doesn't raise the white flag of surrender even when insulted and belittled by the show's actors/writers. As a SF shipper, I know how you feel. It stinks to be ignored, baited, and then belittled by the very people who created the characters and relationship dynamics you (once) loved only to then have the shitty example they set be adopted and amplified by a bunch of bigoted, emotionally stunted, and disgustingly entitled dipshits on Twitter and tumblr. Even if you've no chance in canon hell because Eddy Kitsis has a priapism for Hook and enough Disney dollars to pay off the media into supporting that rape culture shipwreck, that doesn't mean you should be silenced. CS, in its complete and utter unoriginality, will be forgotten by its shallow, hormone-driven teenage fans - other than, perhaps, to wonder what they were thinking shipping it as they take out a restraining order against their alcoholic stalker boyfriends.**

* * *

 **PART II**

 **CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO**

 **ONCE UPON A TIME IN MY PANTS**

Once a month, Storybrooke had a community meeting in the Town Hall. Usually, the theme was something like "We're cursed again, I bet Regina did it!" or "The town is overrun with refugees from another magical realm without technology and they keep attacking cars with their swords!" or "A new villain is on the rampage, but we're sure Regina did it!".

Of course, Storybrooke also had special community meetings, like the time The Charmings invited everyone to help name their son: which worked out horribly... and then ended extra tragically, because not only did their son have a ridiculous name, but they ended up murdering the father of the kid who was paid off to stick their kid with such a stupid moniker. Ordinarily, one might consider karma, but since in the case of Storybrooke it was more common for innocent victims to suffer the tragic consequences for their abusers' crimes, it was just one more name on the list of collateral damage caused by interacting with Storybrooke's most powerful - or famous, anyway - family.

And it was the First Family of Storybrooke that had begged Dr. Whale to speak to the assembled residents, particularly those refugees.

While a red-faced Henry handed out the cucumbers that Regina had conjured followed by a leering pirate with a basket full of condoms, Mayor Mills was addressing the crowd, "... and while most of you have begun to acquaint yourselves with the technology and customs of this world thanks to Mr. Tillman's automotive workshops and Ms. French's computer courses, it has come to the attention of myself and the City Council that Storybrooke is in the midst of a public health crisis. For more on this, please welcome Dr. Whale."

The bleached-blonde doctor approached the podium with an aggravated expression and his own cucumber and condom.

"All right, people," he began, "here's the thing. I have spent the last several weeks testing the lot of you, and at least seventy-five percent of this town is infected with syphilis, not to mention a host of other venereal diseases. Now, it's going to take a shit-ton of penicillin and other antibiotics to kill your spirochetes, stop your seepage, and clear up the warts on your privates, so until that creepy and mysterious supply train can bring in that butt-load of meds, two things are your friends: condoms and when we soon run out of condoms, ye olde chastity belts. _Doing it in the butt is not a preventive measure against sexually transmitted diseases_ ," he concluded with a particular look in Hook's direction.

"What!?" the pirate harumphed. "It's what my brother taught me!"

"Apparently after the malicious prick tricked you into banging your own mother _not in the butt_."

"Well, he said whores had special magic to not get with child. It was three hundred years ago. Understandings of such processes were rather primitive back then," Hook defended.

"They're primitive now!" Whale growled, gesturing to the mostly Second Curse people. "I had a patient last week who was worried not feeling her baby kick meant the placenta had eaten it!"

"That's not a thing?"

"NO THAT'S NOT A THING!"

Whale took a moment to calm himself. "Look, people. Take your condoms - keeping in mind these are magically transformed from leaves and thus cannot be reused - tear the corner like so and then unroll the condom on your cucumber - which is also not a real cucumber and will taste terrible if you try to eat it."

Seeming pretty confused about all of this still, the people fumbled with their condoms and cucumbers.

A woman with frizzy hair raised her hand and asked, "Where are we to purchase the real nether pox preventing talisman? And is the cucumber to be eaten before or after relations?"

Off to the side Regina rolled her eyes, at the back of the room Henry smacked his forehead and even Hook muttered that he was more competent than these idiots. Whale had to restrain himself from cursing and explained, "These are not replicas of talisman. The cucumber represents a penis. You put a real condom on a real penis before 'relations'. It prevents the transmission of diseases through bodily fluids by stopping those fluids from being exchanged. As such, it also prevents pregnancy."

A man with a beard asked, "You mean it will entirely prevent any of the tiny children in my white hot blood from taking root in my wife's vengeful womb?"

Whale gripped the podium, his knuckles turning white and answered, "That is _not_ how conception works. There are no 'tiny children' in your _ejaculate_. A woman has _eggs_. A man has _sperm_. A sperm fertilizes an egg which then grows into a baby. Haven't you morons ever watched fish spawn or cracked open an egg your hen laid after getting humped by a rooster? How can you be so stupid!?"

This got angry murmurs from the crowd and Regina had to step forward. "No one thinks you're stupid, just uniformed," she tried to placate. "This world has a much greater understanding of biology and medicine. Please read the pamphlets Ms. French is passing out-"

"I can't read!" someone called out.

"Me neither!"

"Yeah, me too!"

About three quarters of the room erupted in agreement.

Regina pinched her nose. "All right, all right, we'll... find a video. Everyone keep practicing with your, um, penis proxies."

Upon reaching the back of the room, she found Snow and Charming sniggering. "Oh, shut up! I'd like to see the both of you up there making fools of yourselves with taco metaphors!"

She turned to her son, "Find me some video that I can magic into the AV system. You must have watched something at your school in New York where the curriculum isn't some medieval abstinence only crap."

Rolling his eyes and muttering about being traumatized for life, Henry called up YouTube on his phone and searched for sex ed videos while Regina deployed the movie screen from the ceiling and Snow complained, "It's not crap. I was taught to save myself until marriage."

"And was that before or after you had 'relations' with Hercules? What were you, fifteen? Sixteen?"

"Wait... _what_!?" cried David.

"I told you that in confidence!" Snow hissed.

Regina sniggered. "Oh, I'm sorry, _was that a secret_?"

"You said you were a virgin!" David accused.

"I didn't want you to have performance anxiety your first time," Snow justified.

David rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, you really bought that? I was trying to be romantic."

"By lying to me that I was your first?"

"You lied first about me being your first!"

"That doesn't excuse it!"

"Exactly!"

Snow glared at Regina. "Well, thank you for ruining our wedding night!"

Regina scoffed. "Oh, please, you said vows in front of some guy who was made and unmade a knight by a murdering, raping psychopath before being exiled. Getting ordained by that on-line church is more legit. That wasn't your wedding night. It the day you exchanged a dirty old cup by a dry lake, watched Charming's mother kick it, and then banged in a tent."

"Oh, look, I found a video!" Henry desperately exclaimed, rather horrify that a sex ed video was less traumatic than listening to his mother and grandparents argue about their sex lives.

" _Finally_ ," Regina grumbled.

It took a bit of magical experimentation - she wasn't as adept as Gold at mixing magic and technology - but she got the website on Henry's phone projected onto the screen.

"AHHHHH, IT'S A GIANT DEMON BOX!" someone screamed.

"THE GIANTS ARE GOING TO COME OUT AND EAT US!" someone else shouted.

Of course, they didn't, because the giants started ripping off their clothes instead to bad synthesizer music, which rather enthralled the crowd who'd probably been taught it was bad to even see themselves naked.

"I'm no expert on demon box viewing, mind you," said Hook as the half naked woman opened a door to invite in a pizza delivery guy, "but I do believe that's what is referred to as 'a porno'."

Panicked, Regina tried to stop the spell, but it wouldn't work. She tried to swipe away the app, but the spell seemed to be overpowering it.

Thankfully, it was just a clip of a porno and the next video began to load. Unfortunately, that video was an animated Grumpy trying to sell pornographic pictures of Snow White to a topless Little Red Riding Hood before it switched to the Evil Queen in a dungeon full of dildos hiking up her skirt and using one those dildos-

Henry grabbed the phone and stomped on it until the images on the screen died. "So much therapy! I'm going to need so much therapy!"

* * *

"... and _that_ is what my day was like!" Regina moaned over a scotch at Granny's only to catch a faintly guilty look upon Emma's face. "What?"

"Well... I might have borrowed Henry's phone when my battery died the other day to show Neal that, um, porno clip, so it was in the search history..."

"You _what_!?"

"I'm sorry! It's funny!" Emma defended. "The porno was made by disgruntled ex Disney animators in the seventies and I was wondering if it would be a good joke gift for my parents' anniversary as a sort of apology for, you know, giving them the cold shoulder for the past few weeks."

"You were going to give your parents a porno for a gift? What is wrong with you!?" Regina exclaimed.

"What? We're the same age! They didn't raise me! We're trying to be, you know, friends and stuff, and that's the kind of things friend do."

"Give each other pornos as gifts," Regina skeptically stated. "Who gave you that advice? Hook? Pinocchio?"

"I dunno. I maybe saw it in a movie or on a sitcom?" Emma shrugged. "I never really had friends. I'm kind of winging this as much as the whole parent/child relationship thing. Seriously, though, it's supposed to be hilariously kinky. There's a director's cut where Snow White has an orgy with the Dwarfs and let's just say true love's kiss doesn't involve _these_ lips," she said before taking a drink of her cranberry juice.

"So are you trying to traumatize them into never having sex again and thus never giving you another sibling... or teach them there are more kinds of sex than the missionary position and keep you from getting another sibling?" asked Regina.

"Huh... I didn't consider a subconscious ulterior motivation," mused Emma. "Now it does sound a bit mean."

"Obviously," Regina snorted and rolled her eyes. "And do you realize how prudish your mother is? If there's even tongue in it, Snow says it's porn."

* * *

AN: The animated porno is Once Upon A Girl, which I think I've referenced in other stories. You can find the hilariously OUAT-book-like trailer online. I figured now was as good a time as any to drop that one in, and in a bit of a random chapter. The title is from a rather thoughtless response Ginny Goodwin gave to a question about SQ back in 2013. Will it ever happen? She said "It's not called _Once Upon A Time In My Pants_." Well, she's still right because it's _Once Upon A Time In Hook And Emma's Pants_. And Snow's been reduced to a useless supernumerary who titters about her daughter's sex life with an abusive asshole and left poor Ginny desperately pandering _Zootopia_ merchandise in her BtS snapshots to remind people that she still has some talent.

Next up: Maybe something with Blue?


End file.
